


A Story is True / A Story is Untrue

by FletcherHonorama



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Mental Illness, POV Thomas Hamilton, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, a couple of other canon characters i have no interest in revealing ahead of time, somewhat less than canon-typical violence, themes of slavery and colonialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 213,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25633504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FletcherHonorama/pseuds/FletcherHonorama
Summary: Long John Silver says he unmade Captain Flint.Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 169
Kudos: 157





	1. A Story is True - Day 1 (part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to YourOzness for the phenomenal beta and everything that goes along with it, to Jess for being a long-time writing friend and for the beta read on this and to Gity for the consistent encouragement of the process and excitement for the end product. Writing is so much easier and so much more enjoyable with a team <3
> 
> Enjoy!

Thomas’s world began and ended with the man in his arms. He felt hot breath on his neck, felt the rapid expansion and collapse of lungs where their chests were pressed together, where his hands had come to rest on James’s back, where James’s arms held Thomas so tightly that he should not have been able to breathe at all. There was a sort of numbness in the lower half of his body, so that even though he knew their legs were touching, he could not identify where. He pulled James close, and James pulled him closer. There was nothing else.

Until, eventually, there was. 

Mr Oglethorpe was standing two rows over, squinting his eyes against the sun as he looked at them. He spoke, but Thomas did not hear him. All that his mind could comprehend was one simple, extraordinary statement of fact.

_It is James._

He watched James’s face as Mr Oglethorpe spoke, catching every faint hint of a smile that passed over it when his gaze flickered to Thomas and noting with interest how quickly it returned to neutrality when he turned back to the plantation owner. His eyes were swollen with unshed tears and his face was drained of its colour, but James stood and absorbed the things that Mr Oglethorpe was saying to him, nodding along with his words, while Thomas was quite simply incapable of doing anything other than staring dumbly at the man who stood extraordinarily, impossibly within his reach.

_It is James._

They walked through the fields toward the east gate and the main house, passing guards who openly stared and workers who only dared glance up at them for a moment. James paid none of them any mind; Thomas rather wondered if he noticed any of them were there at all. The only indications James gave that he spared any thought for his surroundings were one brief glance at the guard who nodded them through the gate and then, once they were through it, a long backward look at that gate and the sentry towers that sat atop the long, long wooden fence. After that, he resumed walking peaceably alongside Mr Oglethorpe, his pace measured and his attention ahead of him. Thomas ached to walk beside him, to see his face again, but he had Yardsley and Greene to either side of him, checking him closer than any two sheepdogs guiding one solitary sheep, and so he held his position.

_It is James_.

They walked along the path that curved slowly southward toward the main house and its kitchen yard. Thomas followed James past the stables, where men watched them with quiet interest, past the milkroom and the pantry, where no men worked at this time of day, past the chickens and goats, who paid them no mind, and into the shade of the great trees that grew behind the house, where Mr Oglethorpe came to a halt, turning around to face Thomas and his two guards. James stood still a moment and then followed suit, and Thomas’s heart skittered once again at the sight of him.

_It is James._

Mr Oglethorpe said something; Thomas heard him, but he was watching James, who had stopped in one of the rare patches of sunlight that defied the otherwise heavy shade. He stood so still he might have been a portrait, staring into the middle distance, the afternoon sun striking the side of his pale head with its glittering earring, his wide belt, his high leather boots, his mind caught up in something Thomas could not see and did not know. 

It was an image of James that Thomas would have welcomed at any other time and one he could easily have dreamed up himself in a moment of weakness, knowing full well that the real thing would never be returning to him. Were it only such an image, he would be able to dispel it. Such a task was never easy, but after all these years of practice it was within Thomas’s power to dispel these images, whether they be remembered or imagined, and return his focus to the present. If grief weighed heavily upon him in that moment, if he found himself grey and heartsick, then that was something that could be overcome in time, given sufficient discipline and dedication to the task.

Thomas could still feel the impression of James on his lips, his hands, his chest. After having had that, it was no longer anywhere near enough to only stand and look at him. Yet paralysis gripped Thomas now, and he found himself unable to move closer and reach out to James even as Mr Oglethorpe and his men left them, for fear that to move closer would be to shatter the illusion like a rock thrown into still water, for fear he would wake and once again find himself alone, with only the fading sensation of a ghost on his lips.

He wanted James’s attention on him, and he wanted it with an urgency that made his head hurt and his hands tremble. As he could not bring himself to move any closer he instead stepped toward the house, relieved when James’s eyes snapped toward him and even more relieved when he too began to move, following Thomas over to one of the low rough-hewn benches by the back wall. They sat down together, and James landed as heavily as Thomas did, taking a load off legs that were evidently in dire need of relief. When Thomas shifted to sit slightly closer to him, James did likewise so they were pressed together, Thomas’s right side to James’s left. Thomas released the breath he had been holding, and it came out ragged.

James stared now at the ground between his boots, taking long and deep breaths and holding himself so still that only by the rise and fall of his chest and the warmth of his body did Thomas know he was a living man and not a statue.

Thomas knew he should speak. He should say something, anything, to break this silence, but he was utterly captivated by the form of the man sitting next to him, so strange and yet so perfectly familiar. His mind was filled with the press of their shoulders, their thighs and their calves together, and he could not remember how conversations began and what precisely they were supposed to consist of. He had forgotten how to turn emotions into words, how to take his feelings and make them comprehensible to others. In this moment there was great joy and great trepidation, and they were, at their core, indivisible. Everything Thomas felt was centred on the existence and proximity of James McGraw. He had not _felt_ , not like this, for so very, very long. 

But James must be compelled to speak, lest Thomas begin to convince himself that he was lost not in a dream but in his own imagination, that he had summoned this silent figure out of a hungry, lonely mind and was sinking now into some kind of lunacy from which there could be no escape – a fate he had so narrowly avoided many years ago and which he was determined would never again come knocking on his door. James was here, and so Thomas would speak with him and so prove that he was real. It could not be put off a second longer.

“Do you remember when I first invited you to stay the night with me?” he asked, his eyes intent on James’s profile as he thought how impossibly long ago that night had been. That was the last time he could remember feeling this way: elated and unmoored and so dreadfully, desperately afraid. By the mention of it, perhaps James would gain some understanding of what roiled inside Thomas, and he might then reveal something of what was concealed by his own very deliberate reserve. 

Indeed, James’s unnatural stillness came to its end after a moment spent considering Thomas’s words. He swallowed, frowned and sat up straighter. He took his left hand and held it out over Thomas’s thigh. When Thomas grasped it, he turned his head and gave his reply. “I do.”

His voice was hoarse but still so rich, so expressive, so _James_. Those two words filled Thomas’s heart completely, doing the work of a hundred sermons and a thousand poems. James’s grip on his hand was firm, and Thomas felt something come alive deep inside him that had not drawn breath in what felt like a lifetime.

Fine words usually came easily to Thomas. They rolled smoothly off his lips, sometimes racing even ahead of his mind, surprising him with sentiments he had not yet realised he possessed or connections he had never consciously made before hearing them for the first time out of his own mouth. He could so easily take any and all sides in an argument because he went where his words took him; he had accumulated so many of them and spent so much time in their company that he had given them the power to take him anywhere at all they might go.

James was intelligent and literate, perfectly capable of performing wit as and when it was required of him, but treatises could be written expounding on the shades of meaning he could give to the most meagre of sentences. There was something elemental about him, some deep understanding he had of the passions and the instincts of men that allowed him to bypass the medium by which something was communicated and see straight to the heart of it. That was why he had thrown his lot in with Thomas where others, rich and comfortable and interested only in the appearance of righteousness, had turned away. James had seen something in Thomas that he liked, something that lay behind the eloquence and the moralising and the lordly trappings, and he had had the courage to believe in it.

_Someone_ , he had said, _should be willing to defend it._

There had been no eloquence to those words. James had said, _You’re a good man_ , the words ragged and rough, and he had meant it. It was an artless statement, honest and courageous beyond imagining, and Thomas’s world had tilted on its axis as he heard it, never to return to what it had been before.

James McGraw was a rare man indeed, who said the most extraordinary things – things like _I support it_ , and _But as your friend,_ and _Not necessarily_.

“As I recall it,” Thomas said, realising that it was his turn to speak and striving to return to the thread of the conversation, such as it was, “you never gave me an answer.”

James shot Thomas a wry look, the creases in his cheek a little deeper than Thomas remembered. He squeezed Thomas’s hand a little more tightly. “I think I made myself reasonably clear.”

Before he knew it, Thomas was fighting back tears. The impulse to laugh had come first, welling up inside him at James’s words, and then the very thought of laughter had loosened the shackles on every deeper, heavier emotion that he was holding in his body. It was too much. It was too much, far too quickly, after all this time. No constitution was built to withstand this sort of shock, Thomas’s least of all. 

And yet now he faced it, so withstand it he must. There was nothing else to be done. James was here, sitting next to Thomas and holding his hand. Thomas could see him, he could feel him, and Lord knew he could smellhim. James was here, and what Thomas needed more than anything else was to hear his voice again. 

“There are a great many kinds of silence,” he said. “I never thought this one between you and I could ever be broken.”

“We thought you dead,” James said dispassionately, squinting his eyes and looking back into another time. The calmness of his voice brought Thomas back to himself a little, reminding him that a man could be master of his emotions even in the most extreme circumstances. He did not doubt that James was in turmoil; he felt it in the grip of his hand and saw it in his tense posture, in that very particular look in his eyes. Yet his voice was calm, even flat, when he said to Thomas, “Peter wrote to us and said you had taken your own life, mad with grief.”

“So I was informed at the time,” Thomas said, his mouth responding of its own accord while his mind shied away from the memory.

“We thought it murder.”

“I am so very sorry –”

“ _You_ have no reason to apologise,” James said, with a contemptuous twist to his mouth and anger in his eyes. “I was the fool for believing it. It is I who have done you the greatest of wrongs.”

_No_ , Thomas wanted to say. _No, no, no. Never think it._ But his voice was stolen from him as his mind spun away to consider the vast array of questions it had been gathering without Thomas’s knowledge or his consent from the moment he had first seen James standing before him in the field. All these questions, many and varied as they were, developed from one key issue: how James could have possibly known he would find Thomas here. Now that the topic had been raised, albeit not directly, Thomas could no longer deny an enquiry into it.

If James had learned of this place from Peter, which seemed the only realistic explanation, it must necessarily have occurred some time before the sack of Charles Town, where Peter had found his end. Rack his brain as he might, Thomas could think of no other way for James to have learned the truth of his fate, not with the secret so carefully conceived and diligently kept and the Lord and Lady Hamilton so very long dead. James must have had it from Peter before his death, more than a year ago now, and yet he had not come to Thomas until this day. Something had kept him away between then and now: some illness, some injury, some dire and unavoidable circumstance. One need only look at James to know that he had been through some very recent ordeal; Thomas suspected that to describe it as such might considerably understate the matter.

And then, of course, there was the matter of _We thought you dead_ and _Peter wrote to us_ sitting heavy between them and growing heavier by the second. Thomas did not want to ask about the “we” or the “us”. He could not bear to ask. He could not bear not to ask. 

More than that, he simply did not know how to.

“You know what I was like,” James said slowly, forcing the words out as though each one came at a great cost to him. 

“Yes,” said Thomas, at a loss to pick up the train of thought. He was unsure whether it was uncharacteristic of James to speak vaguely and require Thomas to fill in so much context from so few clues, or whether it was simply that the trails Thomas had once easily followed him down had become overgrown and obstructed as they lay so long untrodden. Both possibilities disturbed him; both might very well be true.

James licked his lips and continued, frowning deeply. “Your death did not ... help matters.”

Thomas looked at James’s face, observing all that had changed upon it: the deep lines etched into his forehead, the faded scar over the bridge of his nose, the heavy shadows under his eyes, the deathly pallor underlying sun-scorched features. How very many years it had been, and what a toll they had taken on him.

“Miranda died at Charles Town,” James said abruptly then, as though he were unable to hold the words inside him an instant longer. Thomas felt himself physically rock back at the impact of them. He felt James’s hand slide out of his. He noticed the way his own hand lowered itself slowly to rest on his leg, graceless and unadorned, his fingernails ingrained with dirt. “We were trying to –” James swallowed thickly and started again. “Thomas,” he said, “I’m – I have been …” He sighed, closed his eyes and opened them again. “I was Captain Flint,” he said. “That is where I went, when you were gone. That is who I was and who I have been.”

“I wondered,” Thomas said, hearing his voice as if from a long way away – from all the way back on the _Margaret_ , when he had first heard the name of Captain Flint whispered by the crew. He had wondered then, and he had told himself no, it could not be. He had decided most definitely that it could not be. Not enough time had passed for it to be possible. James would not have turned to such a trade. He could not have. “I wondered, when I heard his name was James. When I learned he sailed out of Nassau.”

James said nothing. Thomas’s thoughts turned back to Miranda, veered away again toward the menace of Captain Flint and then fled that as well, seeking safe harbour between those two spectres where there was none whatsoever to be found. 

_Miranda died at Charles Town. I was Captain Flint._

“Do you want to know?” James asked in little more than a whisper. “More?”

Thomas reached to fiddle with a ring he had not worn these last twelve years. He felt the shadow of Miranda’s presence at his back, her hand on his shoulder, her laughter in his ear. Thomas had married Miranda confidently, proudly, triumphantly. He had sworn to love and cherish her, with every intention of doing so until the day he died. He had offered her a life of freedom, an honest and mutually beneficial partnership in which she could live as Lady Hamilton in whatever way would bring the most happiness into her life. She had agreed to his proposal on those terms, and for the greater part of the years they had been together, they had been happier than Thomas could ever have dreamed.

But in the final reckoning, Miranda had lived in exile with James for considerably longer than she had been Thomas’s wife. She and James had lived together believing Thomas dead, and it had taken them to places Thomas could not have conceived of when he had drawn that final promise from her, in that dreadful moment where he had been taken from her and she from him and he had known that he would never see or touch or love James ever again, that they had already had their last moment together and neither one of them had had any inkling of it, that everything they had built between them was lost in the blink of an eye.

Thomas stood now at the boundary of a relationship he had once thought himself indispensable in, utterly ignorant of all that his wife and his life’s love had lived through without him. James offered to speak of it, and all Thomas could think of was the pain that such an undertaking promised to both of them: to Thomas in the hearing and James in the telling. How could Thomas ask that James recount such dreadful matters to him when Thomas’s own actions had played such a pivotal role in their futures unfolding in this way?

But, then again, how could he not? Thomas knew that he ought and he must. True, he was a prisoner in this place and an exile from his home country, had been institutionalised, abandoned, disowned and damn near destroyed by his own family, and he most certainly had been the downfall of those he had most dearly loved, but he was still a man. His duty was, as it ever had been, to be the best of men he could be. He would not shy away from the consequences of what he had done. He would not close his eyes to the truth. James had offered to tell it, and Thomas ought to know it. 

So he took up the offer, freely made as it was, and asked James, “How did you live?”

The small flinch told Thomas that that was not the question James had been anticipating. He was no doubt thinking of Miranda’s death, having started there himself, but that was not where Thomas wanted to begin. He did not want Miranda’s death to come before her life. Hers was a life that deserved so much more than to be defined by its ending.

“We had a home in Nassau,” James said. There was a marked reluctance in his voice, but the words were steady. “We lived together those times when I came ashore.”

Thomas took James’s shoulder and turned him a little so they could properly face each other. He waited for James to look at him, and he held his gaze with more resolve than he had felt in an age. He would have this question answered and answered properly. He had committed to this course of action, and he would see it through. He asked the question again, slowly and precisely, so there could be no mistaking of his meaning. “How did you live?”

James’s mouth tightened with distaste, but he did not move or look away. “We were neither of us whole,” he said, “but we did what we could for each other. We found comfort in each other. We did what we could to not cause each other pain. I brought her books, and she grew a garden. She played the clavichord, and sometimes she would teach the local children to play their favourite tunes. She was lonely and ill-suited to the place, and she told me as much. She had some little correspondence, but it faded as time went by. She was a great deal alone.”

_When I came ashore_ , James had said. Only then. Thomas tried to imagine Miranda living a rustic, solitary life, passing her days tending a garden, keeping a simple home and writing the occasional letter. Surely the lively, self-assured woman who Thomas had loved so dearly and understood so well would never have agreed to such a life. Indeed, she had married Thomas largely as a means of escaping it. 

He did not have long to dwell on it. James, after a measured pause, resumed his account. “My notoriety reflected on her,” he said. “She had a reputation on the island as a witch, a devil-woman who was the source of my great and sinister power. We laughed about it, but I doubt she found as much humour in it when she was left to face it alone. She went by Mrs Barlow, and she was the only one to call me James. She was there far too long and I could not bring myself to leave.”

James’s gaze had shifted to look somewhere past Thomas as he spoke. When his words ran dry he looked back at Thomas in mute appeal, though Thomas did not know what appeal it was that he was making.

“She stood with you in the things you did,” said Thomas, discomfited by the lack of surprise he felt at that circumstance. But perhaps his capacity for surprise had been exceeded. The instant he had seen James standing there in the field and then those moments following, where his mind had caught up to the reality of it, surely those moments contained within them all the surprise any man could hope to experience in a lifetime. Now, after having learned of James’s second life and of Miranda’s death, Thomas had gone into deficit in it. It was quite possible nothing would ever surprise him again. “She knew of it all,” he said, trying to rouse himself to wonder and failing in the task.

“She did,” said James. “And she had her part in it as well.”

“And she died in Charles Town.”

“She did.”

“How?” Thomas’s mouth asked before he had had a chance to consider the wisdom of it. Once the question had been asked, then, it could not be retracted, however ill Thomas might feel at seeing the expression that had come over James’s face.

“We were making our appeal to Peter,” James said, terse and factual, once his face was again schooled to calm. “His daughter Abigail had been taken from the _Good Fortune_ and was a prisoner in the fort at Nassau. A ransom of a quarter of a million pounds had been demanded of her father. We took her and returned her to Peter in Charles Town for no ransom at all, in the hope that he would give us his ear and endorse our proposal to restore Nassau to prosperity under colonial rule.”

All these revelations left little impression on Thomas, weighty as some part of him recognised them to be. Truly he had passed beyond the point of surprise. He committed each word to memory, to be reflected upon when, in time, he was able to properly do so. There was nothing to be gained from analysis, after all, of a story only half-told, so he pressed on.

“And?”

James’s mouth twitched in a ghastly shadow of a smile. “He had your clock.”

There it was again: four words said perfectly simply, yet carrying such heavy meaning, such fathomless and unbearable depths.

“Ah,” was all Thomas could say. 

James sniffed and strove once again to set his face into something approaching neutrality. 

“Peter came to me in Bethlem,” Thomas said, once he could draw sufficient breath into his lungs to do so. “He told me what he had done.”

A brief spasm crossed over James’s face. He fought it down and spoke, his voice low and dangerous. “And you gave him your _full and true forgiveness_?”

“I did.”

James _snarled_ and turned away from him.

“It was mine to give,” Thomas said to the back of his head, loudly enough that James would not be able to ignore it.

“It was not,” James said. Thomas could see the angle of his cheekbone, his ear with its silver stud, a broad dark shoulder. He could no longer see his face, and he felt the loss of it as though something had been torn from his flesh.

“I believe, still, in man’s capacity for forgiveness,” Thomas said. He wanted James to turn back around, but he did not, so Thomas had no choice but to speak to his shoulder, difficult and distasteful though he found it. “Many things had been taken from me,” he said. “Forgiveness was something I still had to give and a means by which I could remain myself, in the face of –” he faltered, unable to continue speaking into the air, not knowing how to go about addressing this darkly-clad stranger whose face he was not permitted to see.

James’s head turned fractionally toward him, chin down, deep in thought. There was anger in the set of his mouth, though Thomas saw only a distant angle of it. “For your sake, then, I am glad that you did,” he said, though it sounded like it choked him. “I can tell you Miranda found no such charitable sentiment in her. After Peter’s man had shot her clean through the head for finally letting ten years of pain and grief and anger find its voice, for telling Peter no more than what he had long deserved to hear, I found man’s capacity for forgiveness lacking also in me.”

A great weariness came over Thomas, with what little remained of his presence of mind faltering in the face of James’s barely-contained fury. He felt a weakness in his heart and a ringing in his ears. “Peter’s man,” he managed to say, though his tongue was clumsy in shaping the words. “Through the head.”

James turned back around to sit straight on the bench. He clasped his hands tight together in an effort to still their shaking. “Thomas,” he said, and his voice had lost all its roughness and its grit. He spoke now in a voice both soft and open, a voice that Thomas had only ever heard before in the most private and intimate of moments. He was so transported by the sound of it and so confounded by the transition that he nearly missed the beginning of James’s next words. “I thought I worked on a world without you in it,” he said. “I lived in that world. I despised that world. Once Miranda was gone from it too…”

When Thomas made no response, James put his elbows on his legs and leaned down to rest his forehead on his clasped hands. He closed his eyes and appeared to enter into a meditative state, resuming his absolute stillness from earlier, now grey and faded where before he had gleamed in the light of the sun.

Everything Thomas could think to say or do seemed so hopelessly inadequate, yet continued silence and continued inaction was equally unacceptable. He did not know what to do about Captain Flint, about Miranda’s quiet life and her violent death, about how it all, in the end, came back to choices he himself had made. He did not have the luxury of stepping back from this and considering it dispassionately; he might never have the strength of mind to do so, for all the progress he had made in that respect in his time at the plantation. Even if one day he might find himself equal to that task, he certainly did not find himself so now. It was all here in front of him now, surrounding and encompassing him and threatening to bury him entirely.

When he had woken this morning, Thomas had anticipated a quiet day, as they nearly all were in this place. He had thought if he were assigned to the same field as John Lawrence, they could resume their customary debate about religious tolerance, which had been in an amiable stalemate since the middle of August. If Thomas were assigned within speaking distance of Martin Lawrence, he would share with him the passage in Sidney’s _Discourses Concerning Government_ that had been eluding his memory these past few days, until last night the words had come to him unbidden as he walked back to his cabin.

_It would be madness to presume they will for the future be free from infirmities and vices, and if they be not, the nations under them will not be in such a condition of servitude to a good master as the poet compares to liberty, but in a miserable and shameful –_

“Thomas,” James said, sounding tentative. “Do you –” He broke off, and when he spoke again he sounded a wholly different man, sharp and dismissive. “Yes?”

Thomas blinked and looked, and there was Adams standing before them, carrying a pile of folded clothing in one arm and resting his other hand lightly on the handle of his pistol. He was a tall, heavy man with brown hair, a reddish beard and one of the purest baritones Thomas had ever had the pleasure of hearing. Thomas had not the faintest idea where he had come from or how long he had been standing before them.

“You can’t wear that here,” Adams said to James. “And all the rings and everything.”

James stared at Adams as though he had no knowledge of the language with which he had been addressed, as if the words had gone right through him and found no foothold. He looked Adams up and down once, twice, and made no response.

Adams shifted his address to Thomas with no small measure of relief. “He’s going in with you,” he said briskly. “We’re moving Mortimer. You’re forgiven your duties for the rest of the day, but Mr Oglethorpe wants a meeting with … ah, with Mr – Mr Flint over –”

“It’s McGraw,” Thomas said quickly. “Mr McGraw.”

Adams acknowledged that with a brisk nod and carried on. “Mr Oglethorpe wants a meeting with him over dinner. You know, the welcome and so on. So once he’s out of those clothes and into these ones, I need to search him and give him the all clear, and then you’re in your cabin ’til you’re called for. Good few hours there you’ll get, I’d say.”

Thomas gladly turned his mind from the chasm that had been opening up before him and addressed it instead to that list of tasks, the simple practicalities of movement and action. He had developed an earnest appreciation for such things over his time on the plantation, finding the dual imperatives of productivity and health a vast improvement on confinement and distress in Bethlem Hospital or the interminable sea voyage under guard that had followed it. Whatever anyone might say about Thomas being indulged or naïve – or, from certain quarters, non compos mentis – he believed in hard work and always had. Idleness of the mind had always been anathema to Thomas; in this place, he had come to similarly abhor idleness of the body. Working methodically and consistently had its own satisfaction and reward. There was something monastic about it, something holy, for all that no chapter of _Regula Sancti Benedicti_ provided for supervision by armed guard nor locked gate.

He wondered whether James would appreciate such a philosophy. One would imagine not, considering the proclamations made and deeds committed by Captain Flint and James’s decided resistance to such talk when Thomas had known him. Yet he had come here and surrendered himself into the custody of Mr Oglethorpe seemingly without resistance or complaint, surely knowing that there would be no leaving this place now that he had come. Had he done all that for Thomas alone, or did this mode of existence hold some appeal for James in and of itself? Could it not also be that years and years of the worst kind of violence, from the battle of La Hogue to the sack of Charles Town, had finally become too much for him to bear and now he sought the peace he had denied himself for so very, very long?

Thomas wanted to know the answer to all of these questions. He wanted to talk with James uninterrupted for days, weeks, years, covering every topic under the sun. He needed to understand James; he needed to reassure himself sooner rather than later that they still could understand each other as well as they had used to. But for now Adams was standing patiently before them and there was a process to be gone through: a physical movement in space, a change of attire, a private interlude the anticipation of which was doing unbearable things to Thomas’s insides, then an evening meeting with Mr Oglethorpe, and then the night, to be followed by another day, one nothing at all like any that had come before it. 

“What happens to his things?” Thomas asked, forcing his mind to contemplate only the first steps, without which the rest could not follow. When he himself had come here, everything had long since been taken from him, and the same had been true for every other man Thomas had seen arrive in this place. Certainly none of them had come with rings on their fingers and earrings in their ears, wearing ornate belts and fine, tall boots. None of them had arrived dressed head to in clothing that would, from a distance, pass easily for black.

The shirt James wore, though, was purple. This close, you could see it.

Adams shrugged. “They’re forfeit. After that, what’s it matter. He won’t be needing them again.”

Thomas quite liked Adams. He was an honest and straightforward man, cautious despite his imposing physique and booming voice and almost always respectful toward the prisoners. If Thomas were to choose from among the guards one man to handle the transition of the notorious Captain Flint to an anonymous labourer on a remote prison plantation in the Carolina colony, Hugh Adams would be at the very top of his list. But the qualities that made Adams an ideal choice to carry out this task also meant he was not the sort of man to give a second’s thought to the metaphysical implications of the exercise, nor to indulge Thomas in doing so. It was highly unlikely that he would be interested in Thomas’s nagging fear that if you stripped James of his piratical accoutrements, there would be nothing left to hold him together. 

Thomas took the pile of clothing when Adams held it out to him. 

“Mr Morgan said he had a message for Mr – he said for Mr Flint,” Adams said then, his eyes flickering to James and back to Thomas, who did not know a Mr Morgan and thus had no answer for him.

James, though, looked more closely at Adams, taking in his size, his gun and the careful distance he had left between them. He said nothing, but Thomas could see him thinking, coming all the way into the present for the very first time since they had left the cane field.

“He said there was a final message once Mr – he said ‘Flint’, but –” Adams broke off, apologetic and uncertain.

“Go on,” Thomas said, noting James’s fixed attention, the near-imperceptible quickening in his breathing and the careful, shuttered expression he now wore.

“A final message for Mr Flint once he was here. He had it written down, but Mr Oglethorpe says I can’t pass the bit of paper, so –” Adams fumbled into a pocket and unfolded the note he found there. He looked at James and waited until he nodded his permission: the slow, imperious nod of a man well-accustomed and well-suited to command. 

Adams cleared his throat. “It says, _Who was my friend yesterday, and who is he today? Yesterday he was James McGraw, and today he may find himself again_. It’s signed ‘John’.”

James looked away. His expression did not change, but something that had been taut in him slackened, and Thomas knew he had once again gone somewhere outside this moment, for all that he had only just roused himself to enter it.

Adams stood waiting a moment longer then nodded and folded up the paper again. “Take him around,” he said to Thomas. “I’ll follow you. Get him changed, and he’ll be searched and his things taken when you’re done.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said. 

“I’ll be close by,” he said. “If I hear anything…” His voice trailed off. Thomas did not know – and he suspected Adams did not either – whether he was giving a warning or offering reassurance. There was no reason, he supposed, that the same words could not serve as both.


	2. A Story is Untrue - Day 1 (part 1)

Thomas’s world began and ended with the man in his arms. He felt hot breath on his neck, felt the rapid expansion and collapse of lungs where their chests were pressed together, where his hands had come to rest on James’s back, where James’s arms held Thomas so tightly that he should not have been able to breathe at all. There was a sort of numbness in the lower half of his body, so that even though he knew their legs were touching, he could not identify where. He pulled James close, and James pulled him closer. There was nothing else.

Until, eventually, there was.

James drew in a long, shuddering breath and pushed Thomas out to a forearm’s distance. “Come,” he said, his gaze boring into Thomas with a resolve that burned fierce and steady from a face so deathly pale and eyes so heavy with shadow.

Thomas met those eyes, searching for answers to questions he could not yet begin to ask. There was nowhere he could even think to begin. Here was … James. James was here, and he stood before Thomas in the flesh, near unrecognisable to the image Thomas had held inside his head for twelve long years, and he said _come_. 

“Where?” he asked, his mind dizzy with possibility. “Where have you come from?”

James’s mouth drew tight and he did not answer. 

“James,” Thomas urged, half-laughing, feeling at least half-mad.

“We haven’t time to discuss it,” James said. “The situation is precarious, and each moment that passes increases the difficulty of the task. There will be time enough once it is done. Trust me.”

Thomas was so profoundly wrong-footed, so astounded by the present course of events that he could not gather his thoughts in time to offer anything in the way of resistance. When James took a further step back, out of reach, Thomas let his arms drop back to his sides. He followed James out of the field, his tools forgotten and his mind spinning. He marked James’s footsteps exactly, each impression in the soil serving as proof he was truly here – a proof sorely needed now that Thomas was no longer close enough to touch him and verify it for himself. Thomas knew full well that the eyes could deceive; he had never yet been betrayed by things he could touch. 

Mr Oglethorpe stood on the grass waiting, with Yardsley and Greene standing guard only a few steps away. James came to a halt directly in front of Mr Oglethorpe and so Thomas did the same, searching every face he could see for some indication of what in God’s name was going on. Yardsley and Greene expressed very little by their manner, but it was James who they watched. Mr Oglethorpe looked first at Thomas, his expression one of guarded solemnity. Then he too turned his attention to James.

“Let us finalise the matter,” James said. 

The words were brisk and emphatic, and Mr Oglethorpe, a man whose authority Thomas had never seen questioned on the plantation, seemed as taken aback by it as Thomas himself. He stood a little straighter and faced James with a kind of reluctant regard, addressing him as one might an adult son who grew in strength and whose ways began to veer from those expected of him by his father – a father less domineering, less vile than Thomas’s had been, but distinctly patriarchal all the same. “By what means do you propose to do that?”

James scoffed a little, feigning surprise. “I am perfectly aware that a deal was struck to deliver me here,” he said, affording Mr Oglethorpe none of the cautious respect that man had afforded him. “I know the terms of that deal, and compliance with all of them must be confirmed to the counterparty. Mr Silver is a meticulous man, and I assure you his men have not yet made their departure. Nor will they, until they have been satisfied that you have delivered on your assurances.”

Mr Oglethorpe frowned. “If you wish to return to –”

“I know,” James said, holding his hands out in front of him, his fists only a few inches apart.

Greene passed a set of chains to Mr Oglethorpe, and Thomas watched on in wonder as James stood and allowed them to be placed around his wrists, waiting impassively, patiently, as though he indulged a child. Once the key had turned in the lock, he dropped his arms to rest comfortably in front of him, as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had just taken place.

“What is this?” Thomas asked, feeling a gnawing dread rise in him. “Why is that necessary?”

“They will not want to wait,” said James, speaking half to Thomas and half to Mr Oglethorpe. 

That half was nowhere near enough for Thomas. “ _I_ do not wish to wait,” he countered. “Where are you going?”

James shot him an irritated look and shook his head minutely. Only with great difficulty did Thomas forbear from pressing the issue, and doing so pained him considerably. There was something deeply disquieting about being directed by James in this way, about being summarily silenced mere moments after the love of his life had been so miraculously returned to him, and that only began to scratch at the surface of the things that were disturbing Thomas at this time. 

“We will all walk to the house,” Mr Oglethorpe said. He looked at Thomas with some sympathy, but it was evident his thoughts were principally elsewhere. “Be assured all is well.”

Yardsley and Greene shuffled forward a little, and Thomas was abruptly reminded of his position in this place. He had no capacity to refuse to do as he was instructed and no standing from which to make any kind of demand, however much he might wish it. Thomas knew this and had come to terms with it long ago, but this collision of his past and his present, the arrival of James McGraw in Savannah, had turned his understanding of the world on its head.

He did as he was bid by them all: the guards, James and Mr Oglethorpe alike. He walked behind James and Mr Oglethorpe and ahead of Yardsley and Greene, and he took advantage of the modicum of privacy this provided to reflect for a moment without the weight of any expectation of speech or action upon him until they arrived at their destination.

The truth was that Thomas had far too little information to properly piece all of this together. He could not ignore the evidence in front of his eyes, of course. It was clear that there was some authority vested in James that Mr Oglethorpe uneasily recognised: an authority that James took as given would be understood and respected but at the same time did not permit him to move freely about the plantation. Even more plain were the clothes on his back. James may not be visibly armed, but any child, upon seeing him, would immediately declare him a pirate. What other man would elect to dress in such a way? 

No, Thomas could not deny that the man walking ahead of him, who had once been clear-eyed and decisive in his views on right and wrong and who had rapidly risen in the ranks of Her Majesty’s Navy, had turned pirate or at the very least was in league with them. That was simple logic that Thomas could find no way out of.

As to how high James had risen in his new world, as to the nature of this dark authority he bore, Thomas could not help but remember the news that had reached him on the _Margaret_ of a new pirate captain sailing out of Nassau: a James Flint, fearsome and bloodthirsty and monstrously cunning. It had not been ten months since their parting that Thomas had heard this, and he had dismissed the suspicion that had risen in him, holding it to be a delusion of a weary mind still deeply in mourning. He missed James, he wanted James, and so he saw him in places he could not and would not be. There were many men, after all, called James, and Miranda had promised Thomas faithfully that she would take care of his. They would not have gone to live out their exile in Nassau, not after everything that had happened. There could be nothing at all for them there.

Thomas simply knew too little, at present. He knew nothing of any deals that had been made. He was not aware of any terms or further terms agreed to by James, Mr Oglethorpe, Mr Silver or any other party as yet unknown. He, to this point, had been offered nothing, and nothing had been requested of him other than James’s entreaty that Thomas trust him and the plan he sought to implement. Without knowing James’s intent, Thomas was in no position to be able to assist or resist any plans that were in motion. He could only follow, observe and wait for things to become clearer before deciding how he would act.

* * *

As soon as they entered the sitting room, heavily shuttered and rather dustier than Thomas had expected it to be, there was no longer any question that James had thrown his lot in with pirates. Instead of the genteel sort of guests one might expect to find in this room, three strange men stood at the far end of it, and there was no doubt in Thomas’s mind as to what they were.

Dunstan and Miles had taken up positions at the halfway point between the front door and the inner door, Dunstan with his back to the window and Miles with his back to the opposite wall. They were a pair that Mr Oglethorpe very often put together and gave his most critical assignments, and they stood now in this room with the easy vigilance of well-trained and experienced fighting men. When Mr Oglethorpe and his party entered, Dunstan carefully observed James, Thomas, Yardsley and Greene and otherwise made no move. Miles’s eyes never left the three dark-clad, bearded men standing to his left by the front door.

All of the pirates’s eyes fixed on Thomas immediately upon his entering the room, and he came to an involuntary halt, taken aback by the suddenness and completeness of their attention. The one standing a little ahead of the others, a man of middle age with short brown hair, a greying beard and a burly build, gave him a single close appraisal and then looked away, but the other two, one young fair-haired man and one older with such scarring on the right side of his face that his beard would not grow fully on that cheek, gave him no such respite. Indeed, that last man gave him such a baleful glare that Thomas was given to wonder if there was not some personal grievance he held onto, if Thomas had not, in his former life, somehow caused grievous harm or insult to this man. 

“We have not been introduced,” Thomas said, finding it necessary to step back into the shoes of a lord, to display courtly manners, to find self-possession and confidence in a status he no longer held. He stepped forward to come level with James and considered approaching these men and greeting them, if he would be permitted it, but the scarred pirate forestalled him.

“You’re Hamilton,” he said, revealing himself an Irishman, and there was as much antipathy in his rough voice as Thomas had perceived in his eyes. “We know.”

“So you have seen him,” Mr Oglethorpe said, taking a calm step forward to place himself in between the two parties before any further conversation could transpire. He addressed himself exclusively to the pirate who stood in front. “I trust this will now bring an end to the matter.”

“I think not,” said James. 

Thomas saw Dunstan and Miles’s stances shift, their hands slowly moving closer to their weapons. The pirates did not move, but even at a glance Thomas could see one sword and one pistol between the three of them, and he had no doubt they would be mightily quick on the draw. He was rather surprised that Mr Oglethorpe considered that two guards, even two of his best, had been a sufficient number to watch them. 

“I will not be staying in this place,” James said in a voice of grit and sand and weary disdain. “Nor will Thomas. Nor will any man who wishes to leave it.”

“Sir,” said Mr Oglethorpe, turning rather sternly toward him. “Mr Flint. An agreement has been reached on your behalf. Mr Silver –”

James slowly leaned toward him, tilting his head a little to the side and leading with his chin. His eyes gleamed in the half-light, and the few sunbeams that reached him through the shutters added streaks of colour to his beard and what terribly little remained of his hair. He looked half a snake, half a wolf, and Thomas found himself holding his breath not three feet away.

_Mr Flint._

“I am not interested in agreements you may have reached with others,” James said, an unsubtle menace twisting every word. “I am party to one agreement only, that being between myself and Mr Silver, and I have complied with every condition of that agreement. My obligation has, therefore, been discharged, and I may act as I choose.” His eyes bore into Mr Oglethorpe’s for a few more moments, and then he took up a markedly less provocative posture, speaking neutrally in the shadow of the threat he had established. “If Mr Silver has not been true to his word, by all means sue him for breach of contract. Challenge him to a duel, if you care to. I have no stake in it. But if you would like to make a further arrangement now, privately, between you and me, I will listen to you. We are all reasonable men here.”

Mr Oglethorpe’s jaw was tense and the blood had fled from his face, but he stood resolutely and motioned for his guards to take no action. “Much worse fates could befall a man than to find himself working these fields,” he said to James, forthright and upright, as he always was.

James smiled widely at him, and a chill passed through Thomas’s body. There was nothing in Thomas’s memory that accorded with the way James was now baring his teeth; Thomas might call it a heartless smile, if he did not sense behind it genuine malice and a very heartfelt desire to cause fear and dismay. This was Captain Flint, in the flesh, and Thomas could not look away from the man he had loved.

“I know,” James said to Mr Oglethorpe, a dark delight dancing in his eyes. “Shall I tell you the fates of some men I have known?”

There was no questioning the fear in Mr Oglethorpe’s eyes. It only made more impressive the compassion, sympathy and resolve that Thomas saw there alongside it. “There is a place for you here, as has been agreed,” he insisted, with only the smallest tremor in his voice. “There is no ill-treatment, and there are none of the abuses you believe must exist in a place such as this. The men who come here are taken from places much worse – some of them foul, awful places – and are offered here a life of peace, of healing and of spiritual wholeness.” 

He spoke with the air of a man who believed that every man could be reached by an appeal to reason, whatever his character or circumstances may be. He spoke like someone who believed so powerfully in the merit of his own ideas that he thought he could convince any man alive of their truth if only he was given the opportunity to speak with him at length. It was an attitude with which Thomas was intimately familiar and one he had learned the limits of a lifetime ago in London. 

“Offered,” James sneered. “You _offer_ them this.”

“These are men who have no proper place in today’s society,” said Mr Oglethorpe. “I believe it is our duty as Christians to provide for those who have had everything taken from them, who have known nothing but pain, humiliation and rejection in the places whence they have come. Every civilisation since –”

“Mr Oglethorpe,” James said shortly, having clearly reached the limits of his patience. “I have been offered the King’s full and unconditional pardon on more than one occasion. I have been offered power and riches beyond anything most men can comprehend. It is _I_ who have rejected _them_. I have been party to piracy, to high treason, to slave uprisings and rebellions. I have been sentenced to death and walked free, leaving my enemies burning in my wake. When I rejected the King’s pardon, every one of my men followed me in it willingly and repeatedly, at great personal cost.”

“I do not –”

“Enslavement, Mr Oglethorpe, is not the solution to an unjust world. It does not remedy pain, nor humiliation, nor rejection. It endorses those things and strengthens the conditions that brought them about. The problem does not lie with those whom civilisation rejects, nor with the manner of their rejection. The problem, Mr Oglethorpe, lies with you and all those who consider such a rejection just and seek to facilitate it. I came here in chains willingly because I considered it a convenient method of gaining entry into this prison you have built, and so it was, but I have not the least intention of remaining in this place, much less in this state. I do not accept the exile that is urged upon me. I will not be submitting to whatever authority you think it is you have here. I do not accept any of it.”

Dunstan and Miles were tense and ready, watching Mr Oglethorpe for any signal he might give them. Of the three pirates, only the youngest was watching James and listening to his words with a quiet kind of scepticism. The dark-haired pirate gave James little attention at all, preferring to keep an eye on Mr Oglethorpe and on the two pairs of guards standing in the room. He looked alert but largely unbothered. The one Thomas was most wary of, the older Irish pirate with two-thirds of a beard, stood still and quiet, not exhibiting the least bit of interest in anything that was happening. Thomas would think he was not listening at all, were it not for the impatient glances he occasionally threw James’s way and the way his eyes caught fire, once or twice, at a turn of phrase in what James had said.

When James fell silent, Mr Oglethorpe stood in great indecision. He had faced many impassioned arguments, Thomas knew, and had remained implacable in the face of them. He had overcome great resistance from many quarters in order to establish this place and give it the character that was so essential for its function. Thomas sincerely doubted he had ever found himself in a situation like this one, faced with not only the dreaded Captain Flint but potentially three of his allies. He frowned at the dark-haired pirate and he frowned at James, resolve and pragmatism warring within him. “Your man said –”

“He is not my man,” James said emphatically. “It is not my agreement.”

“Mr Flint –”

“I understand you have a point you wish to prove about the nature of civilisation and the inherent goodness of man,” James said, suddenly speaking to Mr Oglethorpe man to man, his bluster gone but with no less awareness that he spoke in front of an audience. “I understand your project here is fragile. I understand the resistance you will face in trying to imprint your ideals, your views on crime and punishment and your belief in the fundamental value of all life on a cruel and uncaring empire. I understand that all it will take is one bloody episode, well-publicised, and your credibility will be gone and impossible to recover. Believe me, I know this.”

He paused for a moment, just a moment, to ensure that Mr Oglethorpe grasped the implications of what he had said. Thomas alone in that room heard and understood the note of mourning that lay underneath the threat that had been delivered. There were only four in all the world who could possibly have recognised it. James called on it now; Thomas alone in a room full of men was able to hear it. Peter was gone from this world, having left it sensationally enough that news of it had reached Thomas’s ears mere weeks after the event. That left –

James continued sensibly, for all the world like no hint of any threat had been made. “I understand the standards you set for yourself, and I understand that you feel you need to be uncompromising in your approach in order to protect the viability and reputation of your project. If you let one man go, what’s to say more will not follow him?”

“To see him go will unsettle the men,” said Mr Oglethorpe, and his mounting his defence on that ground was such an enormous concession of principle that Thomas had no doubt the point would ultimately be yielded. “They accept their –”

James’s lip lifted in a sneer. “To know they could be free?”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

“It is not an easy thing,” Thomas said, his heart beating wildly in his chest, “to have one’s way of life overset.”

James turned his head to look at Thomas for the first time since they had begun the walk to this building, and if Thomas did not know better he would think James had forgotten anyone else was in the room, with the intensity of the look he sent Thomas’s way. The whole weight of their history was contained in that stare, and so was the magnitude of the time they had been apart. There was piercing, bone-deep intimacy and also a great and unexplored strangeness.

When James spoke, his voice sounded as it ever did, but Thomas was not familiar with the caustic tone – not hostile, nor aggressive, but wounded and weary and overlaid with bitter knowledge of the world. Thomas was not hurt by its being used in his direction; he found the very existence of it upsetting in a much more profound, indefinable way. 

“To have lived in shadow and finally be shown the light?” said James. “Yes.” His voice was as dry as ash. “It burns.” 

“Thomas,” said Mr Oglethorpe. “What do you –”

“Talk to me,” James insisted, turning quickly back around, his voice low and commanding. Mr Oglethorpe stopped and glanced at him sharply, and Thomas had to close his eyes for a moment as memories roared up to meet him. What circle of hell was this, to have such moments from his life recreated, recast and replayed? Had he not faced them enough already in the endless cycle of his own mind?

“Mr –”

“Your ideals, sir, worthy as they are, are hardly insurmountable,” James said. Thomas opened his eyes again, resolved to bear witness to the conversation. “If they were, I would never have known to come here. As I did know to come here, and as I have come here, an arrangement can now be reached between us. It is simply a matter of coming to terms.”

“Do you not think Thomas –”

“I will tell you what I think about Thomas,” said James. “Indeed, I am very happy to do so. I tell you there is no reformneeded in his case. There is no reason he should not be free. If this place is truly healing, as you say, then he has now had the benefit of it for quite long enough. The crime is in keeping him in here, locked away from the world, at the behest of a man long since dead and beyond powerless. If nobody knows he was here, as you claim, how can anyone learn that you have let him go? What danger is there in it? The world will be betterwhen Thomas is able to act upon it, and you would prevent that. You would see him while away his days turning the earth and growing old under lock and key, under armed guard and under your command. You would have him live and die in this place, and for what? What does anyonehave to gain from it that is worth more than a man’s freedom?”

Mr Oglethorpe had no answer for him.

“You told Long John Silver that Thomas Hamilton was here,” James said in the tone of a man very calmly, very confidently closing his trap. 

“Yes,” said Mr Oglethorpe, and Thomas knew that he too felt it closing around him. “I have since come to regret it.”

James’s smile this time was genuine and spontaneous, a glimpse of sunlight through the darkest of shadows. “Yes,” he said. “I am sure you have.”

Mr Oglethorpe raised his keys, and James held out his hands. 

“No other man goes with you,” said Mr Oglethorpe, turning the key in the lock and lifting the chains away. “And Thomas goes only if he chooses to. On those points I cannot be moved.”

James inclined his head, letting the satisfaction of his victory show openly on his face.

Then all eyes were on Thomas once again. Now, perhaps, he could have his say in this matter that so completely revolved around him and yet had involved him not at all. “I wish to speak with James,” he said. “Alone.”

* * *

They walked out the front of the building and a little way down the road, stopping halfway between the front door of the house and the great wooden gate at the entrance to the plantation. The three pirates gathered near the gate, where they could keep an eye on whatever may transpire while posing the least possible threat to the plantation and its inhabitants. Mr Oglethorpe remained standing in the shadow of his house and watched them, Dunstan and Miles remaining with him. Thomas could see no workers in the fields; Mr Oglethorpe had sent Yardsley out ahead, no doubt to clear them all from view. 

So he and James stood in the middle of an empty road, surrounded on all sides by empty space, watched from a distance from two directions but out of earshot of all. Here they could say anything at all that they wished to each other, but more than anything Thomas wanted to forget words and hold James again, to go back to the long, perfect moment they had shared before a word had been spoken between them. He wanted to go back there and be able to start it all over again.

Much as he longed to do so, Thomas knew that if he touched James he would not then be able to say the things he was resolved to say, and so he stood apart and did his utmost to look James in the eye and nowhere else. “Your opening gambit was freedom to any man on this plantation who wished to be free,” he said once he had gathered the will to do so.

“Mmm,” said James. It was no response at all, and so Thomas waited.

James grimaced, and his eyes wandered for a moment before returning to Thomas. “A carpenter’s son raised by a fisherman, nine years in the Navy, twelve years a pirate, and you think I never learned how to haggle?” 

“Your range in it has expanded,” Thomas commented as neutrally as he could bear to. “I never knew you to barter with the lives of men.”

James looked at him for a long moment, his expression opaque. Thomas watched him consider his words carefully and felt a sudden dread at what they might be. “All the world’s a stage,” James said, in the end. “I have played on it.”

“As a pirate captain,” Thomas said. He tried to speak peaceably, but he heard the accusation in his words despite his every effort. “The most notorious pirate captain in the Americas.”

The smile that James gave him was so darkly ironic Thomas barely recognised it as a smile. “One of,” he said with a nod. “And you know they offered me one of our own pardons.”

Thomas somehow could not appreciate the irony. After a short moment, James’s expression cracked and slipped into something more familiar, more real. It lasted only an instant, but that instant emboldened Thomas to continue.

“And you did not take it,” he said. “You instructed your men to refuse the pardons.” This was the crux of it. More than anything else, this demonstrated how far away James had gone from what he had been when Thomas had known him. It was upon this matter that Thomas’s decision must turn.

“Yeah,” said James.

The single desultory syllable aggravated Thomas more than he could say. “Why?”

There was a stranger behind James’s eyes, all cool resolve and absolute conviction. “I know now what England is,” he said simply. “I have seen the truth of her. If I am to make peace with her, it will be on equal footing, monster to monster. If I am to apologise and beg forgiveness for my sins, so too must she. She never will. You know, I think, that she never will.”

His voice was low, but the force and passion behind his words were immense and only grew stronger as he went on. This was ground well-trodden for James. These were words he had deployed before, as were those he had directed to Mr Oglethorpe. Thomas wondered how many such speeches James had in his repertoire, how diverse an audience he had learned to hold under his sway. He had led pirates, and he had led slaves. The names Thomas had heard that Captain Flint had sailed with was long, varied and disturbing, but he had been able to find common ground with them all, at least for a time.

“If my hands are bloody, hers are immeasurably more so,” James continued, his voice rising as he warmed to his topic. “If my wickedness is that of the devil himself, there are baser, more terrible creatures in hell from which she draws her power. She seeks always to dominate, her military strength colossal where her moral character is in ruins. Her power can only ever be matched, resisted and overthrown by those who can stand against both her military might and the coercive, insidious power of empire. I assembled a force ready and willing to do so: those abused, betrayed and abandoned by civilisation, who understood the nature of the beast and what would be required to drive her back. The monster we call England is due a reckoning. This is why men stand and refuse her pardons. This is why men walk into the noose to defy her. I will go to my grave ten times over before I ever submit to her yoke. So I have learned.”

The speech was well and powerfully delivered, and though Thomas did not share James’s experience of empire, if one accepted his premise then the arguments contained in it were sound. Thomas could understand how James had come into his position of power among pirates. He understood how such men would follow him, believe in him, band together and fight for a cause so deeply felt and clearly articulated by him. He saw now how James had come to his place alongside Bellamy, Hornigold, Teach, La Buse, Vane, Rackham and Bonny, and, of course, that newest of names that struck fear into the hearts of the Americas: Long John Silver.

But the actions of the man now gave lie to his words. Thomas knew very well James’s capacity for defensive rhetoric, for deflection and for wilful self-deception. He knew his tendency to begin with his heart and to build reason into his argument only at a secondary stage. The logic James presented always served his arguments well, but it was rarely, if ever, their foundation. Thomas knew this where Mr Oglethorpe did not, and he suspected very few pirates, even among their highest ranks, had come to realise it. 

There was no stranger behind James’s eyes after all. There was only James, who had learned very early in life that in order to succeed he must be able to perform, to be other than what he was, first a boy and then a man who set himself in pursuit of a goal and then shaped himself to fit it. That James stood silent as Thomas now contemplated him, with a detached, prideful expression on his face, and he did not appear willing to look Thomas in the eye. He had never been a simple man to navigate, and that had been when Thomas knew him as intimately as any man might know another. Now, when he had formed himself so differently, in aid of a goal so foreign to Thomas, the land was treacherous indeed.

“You came to me a captive in irons,” Thomas said, testing his footing. “What is that, if not submission?”

“A private arrangement,” James said grimly, “and in service of a very particular goal.” He held his arms up in front of his body, fists up and together, as they had been when the chains had first been put on him and then when they had been taken off again. “It is not the first time I have willingly made myself so.” 

Thomas’s own time in chains had been short, but he remembered the weight of iron dragging his hands down and the chains on his feet that made a colossal effort of every step he took. The experience had not lasted more than a week, but it had changed him in ways he had not understood until years later, if he had even come to a full understanding of it yet. He could not believe that it meant so little to James to have been shackled and brought to this place, however voluntary he might claim it had been. 

“And if Mr Oglethorpe had not been minded to release you a second time?”

Another twitch and another thoughtful silence. James’s eyes floated down to Thomas’s wrists and back up to look in the general vicinity of his face, still not meeting his eyes.

The euphoria, and now the reckoning. How long ago it had been that they had fallen joyfully into each other’s arms – half an hour, perhaps even less. Thomas looked away from James and let his eyes pass slowly over the horizon, trying to remember how he had felt waking that morning, when today had been a day just like every other in this place. He remembered hoping he would come across Martin Lawrence during the course of the day, as he had finally remembered the wording of the passage from Sidney’s _Discourses Concerning Government_ that had been eluding him. He had not expected to come across James McGraw standing in his field, much less find himself in conversation with Captain Flint. He had not braced for it; he was not prepared. He had been allowed so little time to savour the impossible fantasy of James’s return before being reminded so very pointedly that James McGraw was far from a peaceful influence to have in one’s life. Now he stood here at a crossroads so clearly demarcated and so perilous in the choosing, and he was not able to put any of it into its proper perspective.

 _He is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst_ , Sidney had written, in a passage that Thomas had wrestled with daily in his first years here and then, after a time, simply let go, _and he does serve him if he must obey his commands and depends upon his will._

James was not the only one who had moved away from the things he had once believed.

Thomas’s actions needed to be considered, calm and rational. This was James McGraw, but it was also Captain Flint, and Thomas only knew a partial aspect of the man now standing before him. It was one thing for a boy of ten to dream of running off with a pirate captain to live a life of freedom and adventure on the high seas; it was quite another to stand here a grown man and think that the love Thomas had shared with James twelve years ago could possibly warrant his running off with one now.

But James offered Thomas his freedom, and what kind of a man would Thomas be if he turned it down?

 _He is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst,_ Sidney had written. _You would see him while away his days turning the earth and growing old under lock and key, under your command,_ James had said to Mr Oglethorpe.

He could not possibly stay.

Thomas was staring at the plantation wall, the definite and immovable boundary of his world for so many years, when James startled him by speaking, his voice bursting out of him as though he could no longer hold it in.

“Will you come with me?” he asked, his voice choking off at the end of the question. Thomas turned to him in an instant but caught only a glimpse of the way James had been looking at him – hungry, devastated and fearful – before he swept it all away and schooled his face once more into that impassive commander’s visage. It was not a complete disguise, no more than his prolonged insistence on propriety in London had been, but in that moment Thomas found it nearly impossible to tolerate.

“Not if you cannot look me in the eye as you stand here,” he said. “Not if I have to fight you in order to reach you. I want you –” Thomas’s voice failed him, as though he were thirteen again and only just finding his man’s voice. “I want you. I have loved you, and I do love you. I am sure I always will love you. But I shall not leave this place with a man I cannot trust, a man who does not let me know him. That I simply shall not do.”

James stood motionless for five, ten, fifteen seconds. Then he laid his right hand very slowly and very firmly on Thomas’s chest, directly over his heart. He bowed his head low, and Thomas’s eyes were drawn immediately to the blood that had dried into his close-cropped hair. “I cannot rid myself of him all in one day,” James said quietly. “Not after wearing him for so long.”

That was not answer enough. It was a beginning, yes, but only that, so Thomas stood and waited. With James’s hand on his heart, he felt every beat of it, steady and strong. He wanted to reach out to James and feel his heart beating in kind, but instead he stood calmly and he waited.

After a moment, James raised his head again. “James McGraw does not have the power to walk you off this plantation,” he said in a despairing sort of whisper. “He simply cannot. Flint can. Flint _is_. I cannot afford to drop him yet, not until we have made our way clear. Then I swear to you I will be rid of him. I have wanted for so long to be rid of him.”

Thomas felt a wretched sympathy for James in that moment, but this was no time to mince words around things that must be said. “I do not believe you can simply _drop_ him at all,” he said, with sorrow but without softness. “There is nothing you have done that has not come from somewhere inside you. A man may act against his better judgement, but never against his nature. Captain Flint must be reckoned with and accounted for, and that is what I ask of you.”

James froze in place. His mouth worked as if he wished to speak but could not. His hand rested only lightly over Thomas’s heart now, absent and without intent. All his focus was directed inward, and the look in his eye gave Thomas an inkling as to the horror of the task he had just proposed. James, Captain Flint himself, was afraid to reckon with Captain Flint. James, who had feared so little. Captain Flint, who surely feared even less.

But nor could Thomas himself escape a reckoning and an accounting for deeds done. Of what had befallen James to bring him to this point Thomas had his part of the blame, and it was no small part. He had been the one to take them over that most dangerous of lines. He had first kissed James; he had courted him; he had loved him. He had brought them into partnership in accordance with his heart’s desire, perfectly reckless of the consequences. He had made an outright enemy of his father despite every warning he had been given. He had stayed his course in the face of every danger, and now that he, against his every expectation, directly faced the consequences of those decisions, should he not do his utmost to remedy the damage? How could he do anything else?

“I am with you,” he said, his words running away from him, possessed of a mad rush of guilt, confusion and, most bewitching of all, hope. “I will help you do it. I am with you.” He pledged this honestly and sincerely, without consideration of the fact that James had made no promise of his own that he would do as Thomas asked. It was far from the meeting in the middle that Thomas had been resolved to bring about. It was not considered, calm or rational. It was madness.

But then, meeting in the middle had never really been a strength of Thomas’s, and by now he knew more than a little about madness.

James lifted his hand from Thomas’s chest, looking buffeted and unsteady on his feet but holding onto what poise he still possessed. “We neither of us will like that,” he said with an ugly twist to his mouth, the words sour. His eyes met Thomas’s and then flicked away. “I can promise you you will not like it.”

Thomas found he did not care. However rashly it had come about, he had now pledged himself. He knew who he was and what he was doing, and he felt suddenly, radically, transformatively free. He countered James’s grimace with a smile as a familiar humming certainty filled his body. “And I’m sure you have never before done anything you didn’t like, in service of a greater purpose,” he said.

One side of James’s mouth twitched a few times – a flicker of amusement that Thomas committed firmly to memory, matching it to countless half-suppressed smiles in happier times. “Certainly not,” James said, sounding almost as Thomas had used to know him. He stood a little firmer on the ground.

“A known hedonist,” Thomas suggested.

The smile was in James’s eyes now, and in his voice when he replied. “Famous for it.”

“Flint!” the scarred pirate shouted from where the three of them stood by the gate. “Get the fuck on with it! This ain’t a fucking fairy’s frolic!”

“He sailed with Teach,” James said by way of explanation. It was not clear to Thomas what precisely it was supposed to explain.

“Did he,” Thomas said, making a valiant attempt to speak as though he responded to a triviality and not to the casual mention by James of one of the most fearsome pirates in the West Indies and a man who had been, by all appearances, his peer.

“And he doesn’t like me,” James added a little more helpfully.

It would surprise Thomas to hear that that man liked anyone, but he thought it better to save such observations for a much later time, when he better knew the lie of the land. “Doesn’t he.”

“I think it reflects rather well on me,” James said wryly. “But we will have to go with them for a brief time all the same. It cannot be avoided.”

And now they came to the point. “Go where?”

James hesitated. Then he continued to hesitate.

It should have been upsetting to Thomas, or frustrating at the very least. He tried, indeed, to feel those things, but all he found in his heart was a perplexed kind of affection. “You do not know,” he said. 

“Wherever they are willing to leave us,” James said, looking and sounding profoundly dissatisfied that that was all the answer he could give. “Unless there’s anywhere particular you wish to go?”

Thomas could not begin to set his mind to answering such a question. His world had been bounded by walls for such a very long time. He had seen precious little of the New World outside of this plantation – a small stretch of coastline, the township of Savannah and then the road to the plantation – and all of that years and years ago. James, he gathered, had seen rather more, yet he looked just as much at a loss as Thomas felt. “Rather a haphazard rescue plan, is it not?” 

For the briefest moment, not even a full second, James looked at Thomas perfectly candidly, and there were depths of exhaustion and weariness there that had Thomas reaching out to him again before he had begun to understand his reaction, before he even knew what his body was doing. This was a man on his last legs, and God only knew for how long he had been so. 

James accepted the embrace, moving his arms slowly to return it. He spoke quietly, his voice low in Thomas’s ear. “I will see us safe,” he said. “These men are committed to setting us on our way, as long as we do not ask too much of them.” He pulled away a little, enough that they could stand still in each others’ arms but remain face to face, heady and breathless. “We will find a way,” he swore. 

Thomas could not help but kiss him then, for the second time in over a decade. 

James made a small noise in his throat, and Thomas let him go. He told himself there would be a third kiss, and a fourth and a fifth, all in due course. There would be chances enough to kiss James in the future that eventually Thomas would no longer feel compelled to count them. 

First they would have to leave this place behind them, and so for now the count must remain at two. Thomas stood a moment longer with James, trying to compose himself, before giving it up as a hopeless exercise and simply starting back toward the house to announce his decision to Mr Oglethorpe, not in the least bit composed but resolute and, most importantly, not doing so alone. 


	3. A Story is True - Day 1 (part 2)

James had not moved since receiving the message that Adams had relayed to him, but his bearing was entirely different from what it had been. There was a looseness to him now, a manifest weariness where before there had been grim, albeit worn-down, resolve. Thomas knew with absolute certainty that he would be offering no trouble to anybody this day.

“James,” he said, tucking a hand under his elbow and pushing up firmly. “Let’s go. Come with me.”

When James did not move, Adams held out an arm to take the clothes, and Thomas gladly returned them to him. Once he had them in hand, Adams took two neat steps backward and waited, for all the world like he was Thomas’s valet, right down to the expression of professional, hard-earned forbearance.

With both hands free, Thomas could put one hand under James’s elbow and one arm around his waist, and that was enough to prompt movement and bring him to his feet alongside Thomas. Once they were up, Thomas left one hand resting on the small of James’s back to better guide him through the trees and onto the road between the assembly ground to the west of the main house and the cornfield to its north, its crop now nearly all stooked for drying.

He took James through the gate in the west fence and up the wide road to the prisoners’ neighbourhood, where three dozen small wooden cabins were arranged neatly along three diverging dirt paths. To the north and west, the neighbourhood was bounded by gently sloping hillside. To the south, a stand of trees served as a screen between the housing and its associated dependencies – the kitchen and dining hall, the washhouse, pantry and smokehouse – and, beyond those, the two long barracks where the majority of the guards were housed. To the east, of course, was the fence they had just passed through. When Thomas had first come to Savannah, that fence had marked the western extremity of the plantation. A lot had changed since that time.

Thomas took James down the rightmost of the three dirt paths, and he was conscious of Adams following them at a much closer distance than Thomas was accustomed to. In over a decade, Thomas had never given the guards any trouble at all; he was on speaking terms with most and even friendly with some. For the most part, he considered he had well and truly earned their trust. Adams he counted among that number, but Thomas had no doubt that his free hand rested very close to the handle of his pistol, that he watched every move James made with no small amount of suspicion and that his increased vigilance would, by necessity, now extend to Thomas himself. It occurred to Thomas to wonder what sort of treatment James would be receiving were Thomas not there to act as a buffer for him. It occurred to him to wonder how James might have behaved if that were the case, if he had walked into this place and not found Thomas here waiting for him. 

The cabin Thomas shared with David Mortimer was at the very end of the road where it curved around nearly all the way back to the fence, nearest to the privies and within sight of the overseer’s cabin. It was not the most desirable of locations, but Thomas had offered to reside with David and help him acclimatise to life on the plantation, and David more than anybody needed to be paid very close attention by the staff, for his own sake as well as for general principles of peace and order.

When they reached Thomas’s door, Adams held out the pile of clothes again. James reached over and took it himself, making Adams startle a little. “Thank you,” James said, his words a clear dismissal.

“I’ll be outside,” Adams said, and when directed to James there was no question that his words were a warning. “Don’t take too long.”

When Adams stepped away, Thomas pulled the door open and stood back for James to go in ahead of him.

Miranda had told Thomas of the circumstances leading to her and James’s first liaison, how she had gone to James’s lodgings and found him living in a room little better than a cell: bare, uninviting, impersonal, cold. _This is a man who denies himself as a matter of course,_ she had said to him. Then she had smiled, her eyes shining with memories. _But it does not take much to bring him out of himself, and he emerges so very delightfully._

Thomas had been intrigued by it, just as he had been intrigued by everything about this Navy lieutenant he had been assigned, the man with the guarded bearing, the resolute self-possession and the forthright opinions barely softened for the sake of the sensibilities of a lord, this man who had come out of nowhere, from nothing, to hold distinguished office in Her Majesty’s Navy and insert himself into Thomas’s life, the answer to every question he had never known he needed to ask.

He had never seen James’s lodgings in London with his own eyes. He did not know how they compared to the spare wooden cabin in which they now stood, containing only two cots, one wooden chest that sat open by the wall, two stools and a low table, a small fireplace and a worn and warped mantelpiece bearing three small candles and a wooden comb. In his old life, Thomas had been able to offer James so much more, so much better than this, and he hademerged just as delightfully as Miranda had said, showing such a softness and a lightness when made comfortable, treated warmly and wooed. 

James did not give the cabin or its furnishings a moment’s thought. He dropped his bundle of clothing onto the table, sat down on a stool and tugged at the laces of his boots, focused and efficient in every movement. Thomas closed the door, sat on his cot and watched James untie first the left boot, then the right, and slide his feet free. In between momentary glances at Thomas – reconnoitre, Thomas thought it – James removed the two rings from his right hand, took off his belt and set about removing his shirt. 

Thomas felt wretched just sitting and watching, especially as James struggled with the range of motion in his left shoulder while removing his shirt, but he found himself unable to interfere with what felt like a ritualistic divestment of an old life – one that was utterly unknown to Thomas and yet somehow profoundly, intimately to do with him. Thomas absorbed the gravity of the moment, felt the weight of intent in the room and sat stunned in the knowledge that he was to be the beneficiary of it. He could not corrupt it by assisting, by in any way compelling James to sacrifice yet more of himself for Thomas’s sake.

It was a worn and wounded body that stood before Thomas a moment later, clad now in plain linens and ghostly in its form. James had not been provided shoes and had chosen to remain barefoot rather than go about in stockings, and his feet stood out pale against the dark wooden floor. He had a curved scar running from the bone of his left ankle up to the middle of his shin; that was nothing in comparison with the marks Thomas had seen on the rest of him. He ran a hand over what precious little remained of his hair and brushed two fingers across his beard. He still wore the flash of silver in his ear.

“Shall I call Adams in?” Thomas said, rising slowly to his feet. “James?”

James scratched at his cheek and nodded. Thomas could not resist reaching out to him as he walked to the door: a brief gripping of the elbow to reinforce to himself, more than anything, that James was present and corporeal and that he had survived the transformation he had just undergone.

When Thomas opened the door, Adams looked first to James and then to the pile of folded clothing on the table with the two rings sitting atop of it and the boots set together neatly on the floor. “This everything?” he said, a barely perceptible entreaty in his voice. Thomas could see in him a reluctance to compel James. He could see Adams’s misgivings about being required to approach and touch him, to search him as he had been directed, this despite every physical advantage which he so clearly held over James, who was the smaller, older and wearier of the two and who was very conspicuously unarmed.

“Yes,” said Thomas.

“He can’t keep this,” Adams said, tugging on his own earlobe. “There’s no exceptions.”

James fixed him with an utterly impenetrable gaze and let it linger. Thomas watched discomfort grow in Adams – and, parallel to it, a resolve to not let himself be cowed.

“Here,” said Thomas. “Let me.”

James did let him. He looked away from Adams to watch Thomas approach, and then he tilted his right ear to his shoulder to allow Thomas easy access to the left, standing perfectly still as Thomas fiddled to detach the stud. 

A silver stud.

As it came free, a tiny breath came out of James. Thomas laid a hand on his shoulder then cupped the back of his neck with that same hand, wanting only to turn his back completely on Adams and dedicate the entirety of his being to providing the comfort that James needed and the solace he had plainly been without for far too long.

God, he had missed him.

James leaned forward, his head coming to rest on Thomas’s shoulder. His hand gripped the front of Thomas’s shirt and twisted into it, his breaths starting to come short and shallow. Thomas retained just enough presence of mind to hold one hand out behind James, palm up, offering the last physical signifier of Captain Flint up to Adams even as he kissed the top of James’s head, squeezed his neck and braced himself for the possibility of a total collapse.

Adams took the earring from Thomas. He picked up the rings and the pile of clothing, lifted the boots up off the floor and quickly checked to see that he hadn’t missed anything. He closed the door behind him without a word. 

Thomas was thus left with James, who had delivered himself up wholly and completely and now seemed incapable of doing anything more than keeping his feet and holding onto Thomas for dear life. 

“I’m all right,” James rasped, uncannily as though he had heard Thomas’s thought and felt obliged to resist it. “I’m all –” 

“Come and lie down,” Thomas murmured.

James lifted his head from Thomas’s shoulder and detached his hand from his shirt. He took Thomas’s face in both his hands and kissed him. It was an exhausted kiss, a desperate kiss, a kiss that Thomas could do nothing but receive and return, wrapping his arms around James to ensure he would remain standing. He could feel the weakness in James’s legs and the shortness of his breath. He had seen the state of him as he undressed and redressed himself. 

“Come and lie down,” he said again as soon as their lips parted. He drew James’s hands down and away from his face, holding them tightly to still their trembling and then tugging gently to encourage James to move. “Come,” he said. “Lie down.”

Thomas’s cot was larger than most – he was taller than most men – and they fit together on it, though without much room to spare. As soon as James’s head came to rest on the meagre pillow, sleep rose to stake its claim on him, his eyes losing something of their focus and his frantic breaths beginning to even out. Thomas lay facing him on his side so there could be a little more room between them but mostly to keep James fully in view, to be able to see him and watch him and understand that he was there.

“If I wake from this and none of it was real,” James whispered, his eyelids fluttering, “it will be the end of me.”

“It is real,” Thomas assured him, marvelling at the words even as he said them. He leaned across and kissed him, light as a breath, and James’s eyes closed all the way, not yet asleep but very soon to be. “It is real,” Thomas said again, quieter this time, and he rested his own head on the pillow, inches away from James where even that very morning he had known himself to be twelve years distant, with that distance increasing by the day and set to do so eternally.

Thomas had seen the toll of twelve years on James’s body, and he saw it on him still in sleep. James had been far from fresh-faced or unmarked when Thomas had first known him; he was unquestionably a military man, with all the physical peril that that entailed. Thomas knew, too, that he had seen more than his fair share of skirmishes outside the field of battle. He had heard as much from his very first investigations when the name James McGraw had been presented to him by the Admiralty. It had largely been explained to Thomas as being a result of Lieutenant McGraw’s humble background, his extraordinary ability and his unapologetic ambition. He made a target of himself simply by virtue of repeatedly proving himself superior to those who were adamant he belonged beneath them. So Thomas was told, and he had had no difficulty believing that such a thing could be the case.

But those Thomas knew as the best judges of men had made much more interesting observations. James McGraw was a man who seldom threw the first punch, Walter De Vere had told Thomas, and yet the fights that came to him were invariably staged to his tactical advantage and rarely took him by surprise. _A man who does not start fights and yet never loses them_ , Charles Posonby had agreed when Thomas had asked him, chewing absently on his pipe. _I never could work that one out_. _And then the fights stop coming, just like that – or they stop coming to light, at any rate – and before you know it he’s an upstanding young officer assigned as liaison to one of the most prominent families in the land. Uncanny, that._

John Chisholm had described one occasion, years ago, where James had been beset by three men who had long been tormenting him. He had risen bloody and triumphant from that fight, unsteady on his feet but upright where they were not, and John had shook his head as he recounted the story to Thomas. _The satisfaction in his eye,_ he’d said in a tone of grim wonderment. _The way he looked at them afterwards. Every witness said otherwise, McGraw himself said otherwise, but I have always believed him to somehow have been the instigator of that affair. Those men never so much as looked his way again. Two departed the service by the end of the year. I think you will like McGraw, and he will do excellent work for you, but for God’s sake, Thomas, whatever you do, don’t make an enemy out of him._

James had worn both his naval engagements and his private disputes on his body when Thomas had first come to know it, but so many of the scars Thomas had seen glimpses of this afternoon were entirely new to him. James’s arms and chest had been riddled with them, some faded and white and some still pink and looking soft to the touch. Thomas had seen traces of bullet wounds, burns, cuts and gouges, a few of them long and deep cuts and by no means cleanly healed. These marks were not the result of controlled, tactical violence; they were the sign of a man who routinely risked death and paid little mind to recovery.

Thomas thought of James throwing himself into danger after danger – wild, uncaring, desperate – and he wept. He, Thomas, had done this: the seduction, the affair, the challenge so boldly thrown down to his father in defiance of every danger he had been warned of and so blithely dismissed. James had followed where he had led and would not have dreamt of walking this path if not for Thomas. Miranda – his best friend in all the world, his partner, his wife – had spoken sense to Thomas time and time again, clear-eyed and firmly rational, but he had known himself to be in the right and so refused to take a backward step, not for her sake or for James’s, and certainly not for his own. He had not yet learned fear and he had considered himself the stronger for it. He now knew his rank stupidity for what it had been, and it choked him. It choked and it burned, and he could not breathe. It lay at his feet, all of it, and to see undeniably before him the toll it had taken on James and to know the price Miranda had paid – so many years of pain and then a bullet to the head…

Thomas had first learned and then forgotten how to cry in Bethlem, all those long years ago. There he had wept wretched, bitter tears for the destruction of himself and his own life, before those tears had been exhausted and his grief became a heavy, dry, aching thing that he had slowly grown accustomed to carrying with him. Now that he faced the totality of what he had wrought, the tears returned to him as though they had not been gone a day. He tried to swallow them down, not wanting James to wake, to see his suffering and be pained by it, but there had been no need to suppress or disguise tears in Bethlem Hospital, and so he had never learned to do it.

In the end, it did not matter. As the minutes passed, James remained deeply asleep and oblivious to the tears that Thomas shed. Though it was what Thomas had wanted, he still could not help but feel it a curse upon him. He had never borne solitude well, even when he had been whole, undamaged and confident in himself and his place in the world. If left too long with only his own thoughts for company, those thoughts would come to consume him without outside influence to impose discipline, structure to curb their wandering or fresh stimulus to break them out of any quagmire they might land him in. Whatever unfortunate person first encountered Thomas after he had sat too long alone would then be eagerly detained in order for Thomas to untangle those thoughts, to set them in order and put them in their proper place, which could only be done by speaking them aloud to another. Miranda had liked to listen to him, for the most part, but she was one of very few who could bear to do it for long, and she had limits to her patience. So Thomas had done all he could to avoid solitude, knowing that he and his relationships would both be better for it.

That had all been a very long time ago, in a past that had grown increasingly dreamlike to Thomas as the years had gone by. He knew isolation now as he could not have imagined it then. He had been forced to endure a more profound and insidious form of it than any he had known before. Where previously loneliness had been an inconvenience to be manoeuvred around, it was now a truly sinister force, bringing with it pain and fear, and madness waiting ever so patiently in the wings.

When Thomas had felt himself most in danger in Bethlem, and then in his darker days on the plantation before he had learned other, better strategies, he had used James and Miranda as his armour against dread and despair. In order to forge them into the kind of armour that could withstand the battering his soul was taking, he had distorted and misremembered them. He had willingly deluded himself, envisioning them stripped of their passion, their resolve and their pride, qualities so integral to both his wife and the man he loved so dearly, in order to hold his mind together in the darkest of times. He had dreamed of them settled, perhaps married, finding some measure of peace and healing in each other. He imagined the home they would make together and the future they were somewhere building without him. 

Imagining them so had been its own brand of torture, entirely self-inflicted and agonising in its own way, but it had served its purpose. Thomas had been taken and violently changed against his will, and he never would be the same as he had been before, but he still knew himself. He had survived. And if he had achieved nothing else in this world, his sacrifice had left James and Miranda free to live and love in the world. He had told himself that time and time again; he had held onto it as something precious that could never be taken from him.

Only now it had been taken from him utterly and completely. Now that James had been returned to him, so drastically marked and changed and bearing the dreadful news he bore, the life Thomas had imagined for the two of them was in tatters, swinging in the wind like the wretched fantasy it had always been. Thomas had only ever been protected by figments of his own imagination, and the moment James had appeared in front of him dressed so dark, with next to no hair on his head and so little life in his eyes, bearing the telltale signs of chains on his wrists and of recent violence on his body, those figments were lost to him forever. The emperor was exposed for what he had always been – a fantasist – and the discovery left him unspeakably vulnerable. 

Thomas’s later methods, which had brought him back to health and some measure of happiness on the plantation, were barely more useful to him now. He had learned to accept that the past was gone from him and that continuing to dwell there would bring him only pain. He had fought to think of James as somebody he had been fortunate beyond imagining to have had as his for any time at all and who had then been lost to him, as all things must find their end in the passage of time. Thomas’s vows to Miranda that he had made and then broken, the unspeakable cruelty of his family, Peter’s betrayal, his own lack of fortitude when he had been sent to Bethlem: these were all things that had happened and now stood behind him, and they only had power over him if his mind allowed them to. But now, in one single stroke of fate, all the peace of mind that Thomas had so painstakingly achieved was cast aside. James had returned to Thomas’s life just as suddenly and unexpectedly as he had been torn from it, and the loss that Thomas had fought hardest of all to accept no longer needed to be accepted.

James slept on, lying on his back but turned ever so slightly toward Thomas, with not six inches of space between them. He slept deeply and without affect; there was nothing ephemeral or imagined about him. Thomas could reach out and touch him, and he did. He brushed his hand lightly over James’s close-cropped hair, the curve of his shoulder, one raw wrist. James did not disintegrate under his fingers, burst into flames or reveal himself a ghoul, an apparition long dead and monstrous. 

Nor did he wake. 

He would in due course; Thomas knew perfectly well that he would. Back in the beginning, when things had been new between them, James had slept only lightly in Thomas’s bed, the passion and conviction of his conscious mind being often overrun in the night by bouts of agitation, restlessness and uncertainty. The slightest touch from Thomas would rouse him from sleep, snapping his eyes open and causing his body to tense and shift until Thomas could find his gaze, hold it and bring him back to a place of peace. Thomas would then be rewarded with a sigh, a grin, a kiss. Such moments were fraught, but they were also beautiful beyond anything Thomas had ever experienced. He had never before looked so deeply into the soul of a man than he had that of James McGraw, and the miracle was that despite any and all misgivings that lived somewhere buried deep inside him, James had always, always let him look. 

By the end of their time together, it had taken a concerted effort on Thomas’s part to wake James if James was not inclined to be awake. Water could be applied, or a sudden absence of bedclothes. Words could be spoken directly into the ear at full volume, or a carefully-aimed burst of breath could be blown into the same. One time Thomas had managed to braid nigh on three quarters of James’s hair before he had finally come to a sufficient state of consciousness that he could properly bat Thomas’s hands away.

A terrible urge to laugh came over Thomas, and he had to turn his head away and press his mouth into his forearm to suppress the sound. How could this be? How could any of this be? What could be more improbable, more unbelievable, more downright fanciful than the circumstance in which Thomas now found himself, through no intention or endeavour of his own? That which he had resigned to the past now lay tangible before him; memories that had left him melancholy for years now grew suddenly sweeter in the remembering.

He had tears drying on his face and yet laughter on his lips. James, as yet, had neither wept nor laughed. Thomas wondered, bizarrely, if he should have waited, if those were things they should have done together, things they should have shared. He wondered if James laughed any more. He wondered if he cried. He wondered when the last time might be that he had slept this deeply.

Thomas shifted closer so that James’s head rested just under his chin, so that Thomas could put an arm over his chest and hold him loosely in place, lying as he was so close to the edge of the cot that to roll even slightly away from Thomas may well tip him out. Thomas closed his eyes and felt his arm rise and fall with each long, deep breath that James took in and let out. Those lungs had been working and drawing breath for all the time they had been apart, and Thomas had missed every one of those breaths. The heart that beat in James’s chest had been beating for the last twelve years, and Thomas had missed every one of those beats. These ones Thomas did not miss; each breath and each heartbeat he could now claim as his.

Time passed, and passed, and passed. Thomas could not describe the state he entered into: somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness, a state touched by dreams yet ever conscious of the reality of his body, of James’s and of the time and place they inhabited together.

Someone knocked on the door – four brisk knocks – and Thomas opened his eyes. The light was low in the cabin; James slept on. One of Thomas’s legs now crossed James’s at the ankle. He lifted both his leg and his arm carefully away from James and then regretfully raised his head as well, where his face had come to nestle against James’s fuzzy, oddly soft scalp. James’s mouth moved, his lips shaping two or three silent syllables, and then returned once more to stillness. Thomas rested his hand for a moment on James’s, both of those hands now stained with grime where they had always before been faultlessly clean, before rising to his feet and walking to the door.

It wasn’t Adams this time but Ainsworth and Price – or Tit and Tat among the prisoners, when no guards were within earshot – standing one to either side of the doorway. They were two unremarkable-looking men of remarkably similar appearance, though Ainsworth’s hair grew in tighter curls and Price was of a paler complexion and burned more easily in the sun. Both men looked past Thomas as soon as he opened the door, their eyes quickly finding James’s sleeping figure on the bed. 

Ainsworth was the first to look back at Thomas. “Mr Oglethorpe kindly requests Mr McGraw join him for dinner in half an hour,” he said in a tone Thomas found unpleasantly ironic. Price nodded along, still peering in at James.

“Mr McGraw does not have any shoes to wear,” Thomas said placidly.

That brought Price’s eyes to him as well. “Why not?” he asked suspiciously. 

“His were taken, and he has not been given any to replace them.”

“Give him yours, then,” said Ainsworth with a shrug, looking at Thomas’s stockinged feet with some derision.

“Pirate feet is tough anyway,” said Price. “They climb their ropes barefoot and all.”

Ainsworth shot him a surprised look. “Do they?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Price. “Like monkeys.”

“Could you please relay to Mr Oglethorpe that James is in need of shoes but in direr need of rest,” Thomas said. “Tell him he has not stirred from sleep for a number of hours and ask that the engagement be postponed to tomorrow.”

That earned Thomas a filthy look from Ainsworth and a rolling of the eyes by Price. Owing to the nature of this plantation and the backgrounds of a number of the men who worked on it, the guards could be particularly sensitive to perceived condescension or slights directed toward them. In this regard, Ainsworth was among the worst of them, with Price not far behind him. Thomas’s tone had been a little too high-handed, no doubt, or his request phrased too near to a demand. 

This was a line he had walked in the past when advocating for other prisoners – most significantly Tim Larkey, William Cunynghame and now David Mortimer – but on their behalf he had found it easier to approach the task with the required humility. Now that he spoke for James, he felt himself slip so easily into the shoes of Lord Thomas Hamilton, who had always had such a lofty position from which to protect and defend those he loved. 

“I ask that you please relay my message,” Thomas said to them, attempting to bury a pride he had not had to contend with for what seemed a lifetime. “That is all.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Price demanded, peering around Thomas again.

Thomas bit back several sharp answers. Briefly, he considered not answering at all. He burned to take these men to task, but that impulse was a relic from another age. “Mr McGraw is in great need of rest,” he said after a moment, dissatisfied with the answer but not wanting to delay his response any longer, lest one or both of these men take it amiss. “He is not in any state to be in company.”

“Doctor can decide that,” Ainsworth said, and Thomas knew by the bite in his words that he considered Thomas to have once again stepped outside his bounds. 

“If Mr Oglethorpe wants him to come, he’ll come,” Price added in his more impersonal authoritative way. “In shoes, barefoot or carried. You know that.”

Thomas nodded – not his assent, which was of no consequence, but his acknowledgement that he held no authority here and that he would comply with any order he was given. It was a concession he had never hated making so thoroughly as he hated making it now.

It had been a test, Thomas considered as he watched the two of them walk away down the track, matching their strides as though they marched in formation. Mr Oglethorpe had sent first Adams, who was civil, in order to gain a first impression, and then these two, who were not, to further test the waters. Thomas saw the wisdom in it – he would not hesitate in doing the same thing himself, if he were in Mr Oglethorpe’s position – but the fear that it drove into him was a new and awful one. Over the years he had made his life here, inasmuch as any man could make a life in such a place, Thomas had never thought there would be anything here that could truly and deeply hurt him. He had learned at long last what it was to be vulnerable, and, having lost all that was dear to him, he knew not to put himself in such a position again. He had, at long last, learned to protect himself from harm.

He turned back to James, half-expecting to see him awake and waiting for Thomas, clean-shaven and smiling, his hair loose over his shoulders and a gleam in his eye. But all that had changed since Thomas had gone to the door was that James had rolled a little over into the space where Thomas had been lying, and his right hand had slid off his chest and onto the bed. The knocking on the door had done nothing to rouse him, and nor had the conversation that followed it, though Ainsworth and Price had made no effort to speak quietly for his sake. 

Thomas did not want anyone to see James so vulnerable and drained and exhausted. He did not want anyone here to see weakness in him or to have the least notion that he could be hurt and hurt badly. Thomas hardly knew how to bear the weight of that inside his own breast; it was unthinkable that it should be exposed here to so many. But what was the alternative? Was there any other way to counteract the image of the terrifying, bloodthirsty, murderous Captain Flint, whose reputation preceded him with extreme prejudice and would no doubt be the talk of the plantation long, long into the future? Would it not be safer, in fact, for James to be seen as a shadow of what he had once been, as a wounded and weary man seeking refuge who could no longer bring harm to anybody?

Was that what he was, now that he had come here?

Thomas stood for a while with his back to the closed door and contemplated the man who lay in his bed, thinking of the roiling anger James had spoken to Thomas of so many years ago but Thomas had never himself borne witness to. He remembered John Chisholm’s warning to him about the danger of having James McGraw as an enemy. Thomas had fully intended to stand as a shield between James and his demons, and he had thought, over time, that James might play a role in soothing his own. 

A second chance, then.

Thomas moved a stool to the bedside and sat down, one eye on the door and one on James. Mr Oglethorpe was not a cruel man, nor an insensible one. After all these years, Thomas considered that he might have earned enough goodwill that despite the posturing of Ainsworth and Price, Mr Oglethorpe would grant James the kindness of allowing him to sleep this night through. 

After no more than ten minutes, there were two sharp knocks on the door. James did not hear them. Thomas rose to his feet, walked over to the door and opened it. 

It was Wyndham this time. Wyndham was young and clean-cut, so new to the plantation that Thomas did not yet know his first name. He passed a platter of bread and beans to Thomas and tossed a pair of soft shoes onto the floor inside the cabin. “Mr Oglethorpe will see you in the morning,” he said. “If Mr McGraw is still indisposed, they’ll call in the doctor to see to him. Is there anything else you need to raise?”

“Thank you,” said Thomas, as though that was no more than he had expected to hear, smiling calmly and politely to cover the wave of relief that left his knees weak and his mind slightly spinning. “There is nothing further.”

Wyndham gave him a brisk nod, turned and left. 

Thomas put the platter on the table and covered it with a sheet from the other cot. David’s bed it had been for the last three weeks, and Thomas felt a sharp pang of guilt even though moving David elsewhere to make room for James was not a matter over which he had had any control. Guilt would get him nowhere; all he could do was accept the change and act accordingly. Tomorrow Thomas would find out where they had sent David, and he would seek him out and reassure him of their continuing friendship. He would speak to whomever he had been placed with and explain what needed to be done if David was to ever be well in this place.

But there was nothing more to be done today, so he settled himself back on the bed with James, who stirred and pressed himself against Thomas without ever approaching wakefulness. Thomas declared an end to thinking for the day and denied himself all worries and fears and thoughts of tomorrow. Once they lay together once more it was remarkably easy for Thomas to close his eyes and be at peace, to hold James close to him and think of nothing but this moment he found himself in.

The moment was long, and it was calm, and Thomas remained in it for as long as he could before he sank down to join James in sleep.


	4. A Story is Untrue - Day 1 (part 2)

“This is yours,” Mr Oglethorpe said. “I will not take it.” He dropped a small bagful of coins into Thomas’s hand, to the marked displeasure of the three pirates, and suddenly Thomas was an immeasurably wealthy man. 

For years, Billy Cobden’s lucky dollar had made him the richest prisoner on the plantation – “your lordship”, the men had laughingly called him – until it had been discovered and taken away, and with it Billy’s spirit and all the joy that the Right Honourable Lord Billy of Cobden Hall had brought to the place. Here, where the concept of money was a mere abstraction at best, where they earned nothing and owned nothing, the value of that dollar had been astronomically high and its loss equally devastating.

Thomas had been raised to consider what he now held in his hand as less than a pittance, but in this moment he felt he had been bequeathed a fortune. He held the bag out for James to tuck away somewhere, not liking the weight of it in his hand.

“Thomas,” Mr Oglethorpe said sharply. “It is yours.”

“Sir,” James said, his voice tight and furious, as though responding to the most grievous of insults. “Thomas does not need to be _protected_ from _me_.”This anger was not rhetorical or calculated as the other had been, but it was just as carefully controlled. Thomas stood beside James and found he had no fear of it.

Mr Oglethorpe’s expression was pained as he looked at Thomas, and so Thomas held onto the bag. He suspected that Mr Oglethorpe would never be at peace with the decision he had made today, but Thomas would do what little he could to put his mind more at ease. He would carry the coins himself until they had left the plantation. Perhaps they would grow lighter over time.

“They’re more likely to take it forcibly from him than they are from me, if that’s your concern,” James said, still highly displeased and letting it show.

Mr Oglethorpe did not spare him a glance. That was not his concern, and James knew that as well as anybody. Instead, Mr Oglethorpe addressed himself once again to Thomas. “I ask that you do not speak the name of any man who lives here where another might hear it,” he said. “I ask that you do not jeopardise their lives or this mission. And I require, of course, that you do not ever return.”

Thomas shifted the bag of coins to his left hand and offered his right to the man who had held him prisoner in this place for over a decade of his life. “You have my word,” he said, and shook his hand, man to man. This place had healed him, in its way, as James had said, and Mr Oglethorpe had played his part in that. It was yet to be seen what damage, if any, might also have been done.

“And I ask the same of you, sir,” Mr Oglethorpe then said to James.

A private amusement crossed over James’s face, but he took two steps to Mr Oglethorpe and shook his hand in a perfectly gentlemanly fashion. Mr Oglethorpe then turned his attention to the three pirates.

“We already have our instructions,” the dark-haired pirate said firmly. He was an Englishman, and a reasonably well-educated one at that. “We abide by them and take none from you.”

Mr Oglethorpe’s lips tightened. “May I know your instructions, then, sir?”

“Your little plantation’s safe from us,” the scarred one said, and the contrast between his manner and the Englishman’s could not have been more stark. “Couldn’t give a fuck about a single man here.”

“Yes,” said Mr Oglethorpe. “I see.”

“It’s not pretty when slaves turn,” the youngest pirate volunteered, though nobody had been looking his way. “I’d stick to these men, the sheep, if I were you, and don’t do anything to them that you could not bear having done to you in your turn.” His accent was Irish, soft and melodious, and he had a cool, measured manner of speaking that usually indicated a thinking man. Thomas had thought him subordinate to the older Irishman, who had done most of the talking to this point, and the Englishman, whom Mr Oglethorpe looked to as the leader. He rethought this now, as the young pirate spoke freely without deferring to either of his companions. Perhaps the fabled democracy of pirates that Thomas had heard tales of was based in truth after all.

Mr Oglethorpe looked at him askance, perhaps as surprised as Thomas that he had spoken at all. “I have no intention of mistreating these men,” he said. “They are not slaves but prisoners, and they are under my care.”

The pirate let his gaze linger on the two men with muskets standing on alert about twenty yards further down the road than the main party, Dunstan to the left and Miles to the right, and then he looked away from them again, having concluded his part in the conversation.

“Are we fucking done?” the scarred pirate said.

Mr Oglethorpe ignored him and spoke to Thomas. “God be with you,” he said. “And keep your wits about you.”

Thomas drew in a deep breath and let it out again. He opened his mouth to bid a polite farewell to James Oglethorpe, philanthropist and plantation master, when a shout came from somewhere toward the interior of the plantation, quickly followed by a more general outcry. Every man of them turned to look in that direction, and in five seconds a figure came running around the side of the big house, carrying what looked like a shovel, and covering ground like the devil himself was at his heels.

David Mortimer.

Miles and Dunstan did not hesitate in raising their guns. Yardsley came after David, in close pursuit but gaining no ground, and Cameron and Patton were a little way behind him, shouting at David to stop as they ran after him. 

David paid them no mind, gaining the road and tearing along it right toward Thomas and Mr Oglethorpe and the pirates they stood in conversation with, heedless of Miles and Dunstan training their weapons on him as he approached, in perfect position to shoot.

“Hold your fire,” Mr Oglethorpe shouted, but Dunstan had long since lined up his shot, and at the exact moment Mr Oglethorpe issued the command, with David not ten yards away from him, he pulled the trigger.

Several things happened then, all at once. There was a loud clang and a high-pitched yelp. The scarred pirate drew his pistol quick as a flash. The Englishman’s hand flew to his cutlass. A slender knife appeared in the hand of the younger Irishman. James reached for a weapon of his own, but his hand closed on empty air. Thomas started forward, but James grabbed him and held him back, his grip desperately hard around Thomas’s forearm. Mr Oglethorpe ordered his men to lower their weapons, his voice ringing out decisively over the chaos that threatened to ensue. James started a little at the absolute authority in his voice; the guards obeyed the command without a moment’s hesitation.

David stumbled forward, passing both Dunstan and Miles and coming to an abrupt halt when he finally saw the pistol that the Irish pirate had trained on him. He had not been hit; the blade of the shovel he carried was mangled and misshapen, bent by the force of Dunstan’s shot. He still wore the bruises from his last escape attempt, and Thomas’s heart ached to see it. 

It ached all the more because he knew this attempt would be no more successful than the last. Thomas could see six guns at very little distance: two ready to fire, and four more very nearly so. Dunstan had already set about reloading his musket and would not take long to do so; the three guards who had come after David would be within range and ready for the command within moments. 

“Take me with you,” David said, lowering the shovel and appealing directly to Thomas, disregarding all six guns, every pirate and Mr Oglethorpe himself. “Please take me with you, Thomas. You know I should not be here. You know what this is.”

He was so young. At seventeen, Thomas’s main concerns had been keeping up with his schoolwork and the drafting of letters home that kept his parents informed of his academic progress and assured them of his wellbeing, as was his duty, and deliberately concealed from them the person he felt himself becoming in their absence, as was his right. He told them how diligently he studied without revealing which material he was devoting most of his time to. He told them something of the boys he was closest to without disclosing the very particular things that occurred between them. He had thought himself clever beyond words, playing a game at which he excelled and could never, ever fail. 

At seventeen, Thomas had been invincible. He looked at this boy, this poor doomed and desperate boy, and he did not know what he could say to him.

“There is no question of your leaving,” Mr Oglethorpe said, stern as a schoolteacher.

“Shut the fuck up,” the scarred pirate told him, holding his pistol steady. “What’s your name, boy?”

David raised his chin and squared his shoulders, his small dark eyes fixed on the barrel of the man’s gun. “David Mortimer,” he said. “Though I’ve been told I no longer have any right to the name.”

“There will be no negotiation on this point,” Mr Oglethorpe said very clearly. “Mr Mortimer is not at liberty to leave.”

“And why is that?” James asked.

“He thinks I’ll run straight home and murder my father.”

James regarded David with genuine interest then, which was matched by his fellow pirates. “Will you?”

“James,” said Thomas. “He will not be allowed to leave.”

James turned his head fractionally toward Thomas, but his eyes remained fixed on David, who was looking between all the pirates now and working himself up to a decision. He could answer James’s question truthfully and hope that these wicked men would feel kinship with him and assist in his cause, or he could lie and hold onto the slim hope that he might be believed by Mr Oglethorpe and formally released. Thomas knew, as David refused to acknowledge, that they were both vain hopes and that any choice between them was as empty as a choice could be.

“Go back, David,” Mr Oglethorpe said. “You must go back.”

David turned to him then. “You would see me die in here,” he declared with the kind of single-minded, burning fury only a very young man could muster. “You would see me die in here in order to protect the life and the reputation of a man whose actions I _know_ you have heard of and ought to despise. I was sent here to save his life, to save his _name_ , and you take his money and destroy me at his word. The longer I am here, the more you receive from him and the higher in his esteem you rise. The devil works through you, as it does through him and all men like you. Fuck you and fuck them all. When I am free from here, I _am_ going home. I’m telling them the whole _fucking_ story, and if he –”

“Stop,” said James, taking three quick steps forward. “ _Stop_.”

The guards trained their weapons: Dunstan, Miles, Yardsley, Cameron, Patton. David stared at James, his diatribe fading from his lips.

“Do not do this,” James said to him. “Do not make them do this. Live.”

David blinked tears out of his eyes and licked at his swollen lip. “Why?” he asked, plaintive as a child.

Thomas could not see James’s face, but he could see the stiffness in his back and neck. He saw the slight angle at which James leaned toward David, profoundly different from the one he had used in his conversation with Mr Oglethorpe in the house. “There will come a chance,” said James. “It will be a real chance. You will grow stronger, and you will learn, and you will be ready for it when it comes. The tide will always turn. You must watch for it.”

“No, take me now,” David pleaded. “I cannot survive this. I’ll be a pirate. I’ll do –”

“I did not come here for you,” said James, and the softness in his voice put a chill into Thomas’s spine. “I came here for Thomas, and I will not risk him for you. Mr Oglethorpe there will not risk his business for you. These men will sooner shoot you dead where you stand than allow you to endanger their lives or their livelihoods. See the situation for what it is. Make decisions that will see you stronger. You cannot win if you do not survive.”

Something passed between them, silent and invisible, but Thomas did not grasp it. He only saw David’s expression close, saw him shift his shovel from one hand to the other and then set it down to lean on it. He saw James lift his head and take one step backward. He saw the barrels of the five muskets dip a little toward the ground.

“I see you have it all well in hand,” the young Irish pirate said pointedly to Mr Oglethorpe, tucking his knife into a small sheath Thomas now saw at his belt. “Nothing at all to be concerned about here.” He threw the plantation owner a knowing, pitying look and turned toward the gate.

“About fucking time too,” said the scarred pirate, either missing his young companion’s irony or deciding to ignore it. Thomas thought he saw reluctance in the way he tucked his pistol back into its holster. He thought his hand lingered on the handle far longer than was necessary.

James turned back toward them looking grim and somehow devastated, though what had caused it Thomas could not say. He threw Mr Oglethorpe one dark, hostile look and walked straight past him, looking at Thomas not at all as he did. Thomas stood astounded at being so bypassed, and his eyes found their way to David, as though the answer to James’s turn in demeanour could be found there. 

It was a wretched sight. He stood out on his own, a rail-thin boy pale as bone leaning on his mangled shovel, surrounded on all sides by his jailers, looking after James with what Thomas could only describe as heartbreak on his face. 

“It is not right that he is here,” Thomas said to Mr Oglethorpe. 

“It is not justice, no,” Mr Oglethorpe replied, his voice calm and so very certain. “But I believe it is mercy.”

There was a bitterness deep in Thomas’s throat, and he could not swallow it away. “Is it mercy for David, or mercy for his father to be so easily rid of him?” he asked. He could feel his heart beating not only in his chest but also in his ears and his fingertips: a sign of the fear that had been inculcated in him over so many years of captivity, to be so incautiously and intemperately addressing the master of his fate. 

_He is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world._

Thomas could only speak in this way because he was about to be free; until this moment, he had not truly understood what captivity had done to him. He felt air fill his lungs and realised for the first time that Mr Oglethorpe was of a similar age to him, and he wondered at their paths never having crossed as young men. He wondered, if they had, whether they might have become friends. Thomas wondered, if he had gone to Nassau as governor, whether they might have become allies in the New World, whether he would have been invited to visit this plantation and seen it as something noble and good. 

“It is mercy for David that he lives and breathes,” Mr Oglethorpe said as David adjusted his grip on his shovel and turned to walk back toward the main house, his steps heavy and his shoulders slumped, three guards following in his wake. “He would not be alive this day had I not agreed to have him here. His father could be easily rid of him in any number of ways, none of which are preferable to this.”

“And this way you turn a profit, of course,” said the English pirate. “Now, if you don’t mind, it’s time we were leaving.” Thomas was struck anew by the forwardness of these men and their utter lack of consideration for a man’s rank or his standing. They spoke when they wished to and said what they would. There was something bewitching about it, especially coming from this man who sounded, in his manner of speaking, remarkably like the old world order in London. Thomas rather suspected the egalitarianism and the fearlessness of these men caused Mr Oglethorpe far more concern than the weapons they carried with them. Free men, not just at liberty but truly free in spirit, could threaten everything his world had been built on, and Captain Flint’s campaign against that world had made it clear that such men were now fully cognisant of this power that they held.

“Mr Morgan, I do not appreciate having been used in this way,” Mr Oglethorpe said. “It will not be forgotten.”

“It doesn’t bother me what you do or don’t appreciate,” the pirate replied. He looked Thomas in the eye for the first time and spoke to him on the same level as he had Mr Oglethorpe. “We’ll be off, then.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. He took a moment to look over the plantation: the wide fields and the rustling cane, the big house with its backdrop of even bigger trees, the hills rising in the middle distance in every direction. He rarely had the chance to see it laid out in its entirety; even when sent to work in the presentation fields closest to the front gate, there was little opportunity and little motivation to take in the sights, to look at the prospect with an artist’s eye, to see the afternoon sun in its golden beauty without thinking of the fierce and unrelenting heat that one suffered when working under it for hours on end.

This would be Thomas’s last view of the place, but it was certainly not a typical one. With David now out of sight not a prisoner could be seen in the fields, and only Dunstan and Miles remained alongside Mr Oglethorpe to witness Thomas’s departure. He wondered where the men had been taken, what reason they had been given for their unscheduled break in work, what rumours were already whispering through their number and what kind of things would be said about Thomas after he had gone.

It was a connection severed too quickly, too sharply. Thomas had not been expecting to say goodbye today. He had not thought he ever would be saying goodbye. His choice to take the freedom that James offered him was undoubtedly the correct one – and, most importantly of all, it had been his own decision to make – but there were things he had here that it pained him to be leaving behind, with no farewells and no assurance that his fellow prisoners would not bear any adverse consequences of the pirates’ visit today. Thomas feared for David, and he feared for what measures may be introduced to the plantation following the day’s events, unprecedented as they were.

But Thomas had made his choice. Whatever the future of this plantation might be, he would play no part in it. It had taken more than eleven years of his life from him, and he would not let it take a minute more.

Thomas, Mr Oglethorpe and Mr Morgan walked the remaining distance to the gate, where James and the other two pirates were waiting. This time James did look at Thomas and offered him a tiny pained smile, apology in his eyes. When Thomas went to stand beside him, James took hold of his hand and squeezed it lightly. 

Mr Oglethorpe unlocked the gate, and Dunstan stepped forward to help him drag it open. The two Irish pirates walked through first, then James and Thomas together, followed by Mr Morgan. The gate was pulled closed again, and Thomas heard it lock behind him. He kept walking, his fingers intertwined with James’s, and he prepared himself to face the uncertain future.


	5. A Story is True - Day 2

Thomas woke with warmth at his chest, with his right arm draped over James and his left arm dead under his weight, and he could not hold back the soft sound of joy and delight that came out of him. James stirred and began to come awake, and Thomas watched doubt and disbelief gradually give way to wide-eyed and breathless euphoria as James slowly and somewhat hazily found his way to full consciousness. Everything Thomas could see on James’s face mirrored exactly what he felt in his own heart and in his soul, and though he too struggled to breathe in the face of such overwhelming emotion, he felt himself smiling as he beheld the miracle that lay in his arms. 

“Good morning,” he said, putting a slightly shaking hand over James’s heart so he could once more feel it beating. James looked at that hand for a long moment, watching it rise and fall as his chest heaved, and then he looked back at Thomas’s face with tears welling in his eyes. Thomas felt his own tears rise in answer, but he could not stop smiling even as they spilled over. 

James closed his eyes, and his brow wrinkled as he fought to bring his breathing back under his control. He let out one long, slow breath and then drew in another, just as he had used to do when the time came for him to get up and leave, when he had to build himself back up into Lieutenant McGraw for the sake of all the rest of the world, and Thomas’s heart dropped down into his stomach at the sight of it.

“Wait,” he said, nowhere near ready to let this closeness go. He moved his hand from James’s heart to his cheek, his beard scratchy against Thomas’s palm as his fingers rubbed small circles in the lamentably short hair at his temple. “Be easy. Shhhh.”

James’s eyelids fluttered, and he lay still for a moment with them closed before opening them again, still teary and now quietly dismayed. “I have lost the knack of it.”

Thomas drew him closer, his good hand firmly holding James’s head to his shoulder where the other, now that he could move it, began the wretched tingling that signified its coming back to life. He disregarded it completely, forcing that arm to wrap around James and hold him tight and close and safe. 

James’s voice was muffled as he spoke into Thomas’s shoulder. “You are rather stronger than you were.”

“All the better,” Thomas murmured into his ear, squeezing a little tighter and then letting go. James edged back a little, but only a little. His eyes were now red with tears and still bleary after what must have been at least eighteen hours sleep and may have been closer to twenty. There was no longer any hair to tuck away from his face and no smooth cheek for Thomas to run his fingers down, but those eyes were exactly the same. They transported Thomas to another time, another place and a version of himself that had long since been buried.

Then James, as he was wont to do, shattered that imagining entirely. “They like you so much here they let you sleep this late into the morning?” he said, looking past Thomas and over the rest of the room. Thomas was well aware of the effort he must be expending to speak in such a simple and conversational tone; they still lay so near to each other that he could feel the physical strain with which James held himself together. James preferred not to acknowledge it; Thomas would wait and see what became of it. “I was told Mr Oglethorpe was an enlightened man, but…”

“Your arrival here in this way was quite unprecedented,” Thomas said, wanting to touch him again, addicted to it already after going so long without. The pangs in his left arm would have been unbearable, if they were not so heavily outweighed by everything else flooding through Thomas’s mind. “Allowances are being made.”

“I’ve slept on you,” James said, frowning. He reached out to grip Thomas’s forearm and then moved on to attend to his hand, manipulating its fingers and squeezing them tight. “You need to move the arm.”

Thomas winced. “It is better just to wait for it to pass.”

“It isn’t,” said James, his voice rising a little in urgency but his hands slow and firm as he kneaded Thomas’s arm. “You need to move. I need to move. We will not be left alone here forever, and I would rather have my wits about me when somebody comes.”

“Your wits are not currently about you?”

“My wits are in a shambles,” James said. “As are yours. Come, move the arm.”

“My wits are very much about me,” Thomas insisted, but when James let go of his arm and got out of the bed he did nothing, his thoughts not moving quickly enough to formulate any sort of protest or to physically prevent him.

James stood unsteadily, facing the north wall and squinting his eyes against the sunlight. The room was warm and a little muggy, and Thomas knew it was hours past the time he would usually be awake and out in the fields. “It is near noon,” James commented. “That is quite an extraordinary accommodation on my account.”

“You are an extraordinary man,” Thomas said. He winced as he pushed himself up to a seated position with his tingling arm. “And heavy.”

James sat very suddenly back down on the bed as Thomas rose from it. Thomas was around to his side of the bed before he had time to blink, putting his good hand on James’s shoulder to hold him up while he shook out the other, clenching his jaw against its complaints. James’s weight tipped first one way and then the other; without Thomas’s hand to steady him, he would not be sitting upright much longer.

“Is there any food here?” James asked, the strength gone from his voice and the colour from his cheeks.

“My wits are not about me in the least,” Thomas said, heavy admonition in each word. “You have had nothing all this time, and for God knows how long before that. I knew this, and I have done nothing to remedy it.”

“It is no urgent matter,” James said faintly, liar that he was.

Thomas looked for the platter he had left on the table and for a moment thought he must have misremembered the events of the previous afternoon. Wyndham had brought food only, not drink, and yet on the table sat not only the covered platter Thomas had left there but a dark brown jug, covered, and two cups along with it. 

He turned back to James, who was sitting with his eyes closed, steady for the moment but far from strong. He considered the logistics of bringing food to James and of bringing James to the food and decided not to make any mention of the fact that guards were strictly forbidden to enter the prisoners’ cabins without express authority from Mr Oglethorpe or the overseer, or that breakfast was not typically delivered to and eaten in a prisoner’s own lodging. Thomas would puzzle over that himself as they ate, as well as reflect on how deeply asleep he must have been to have had no awareness that any of this had occurred and to have slept through the dawn bell and all the bustle that invariably followed it.

James opened his eyes and held his hand out for Thomas to pull him to his feet, so Thomas obliged him. It was a convenient excuse to keep hold of James all the way over to the table and ensure he was safely seated before Thomas collected the stool he had left by the bed, sat himself down at the table opposite James and looked at what they had been given.

This bread was fresh, and the beans that Wyndham had brought yesterday were nowhere to be seen. Thomas poured water into both cups as James tore off a sizeable chunk of the bread and set to.

“How is your arm?” he asked after a couple of mouthfuls, regarding Thomas with an appraising eye.

“Fine,” Thomas said. There was only a residual discomfort now, and it was nothing to the gnawing hunger that Thomas could no longer ignore as he took some bread for himself. James was in far direr straits, but even Thomas had not eaten since midday the day before. “How is yours?”

“Hm?” James said.

“Don’t ‘hm’ me,” Thomas said. “I think you understand my question.”

A low delight came over James, and he smiled into his cup as he took a sip of water. 

Thomas would not be put off his enquiry by the rush of warmth that came over him at seeing James smile and the desire to see it again. He ought to have his wits about him, and so he would not be diverted. “I noticed yesterday that you had some difficulty with your shoulder,” he said. “How is it this morning?”

“An old ache and one I am well able to manage,” James said around a mouthful of bread. “Will you tell me what has gone on here while I have been asleep?”

“You were summoned to meet with Mr Oglethorpe yesterday evening,” Thomas said. “I explained that you were indisposed.”

James shot Thomas a curious look. “Did you,” he said.

“You were quite profoundly so.”

James swallowed and looked down at the table. He scratched at his beard, then his scalp.

“How do you feel?”

James looked up at Thomas, and in his eyes there was no answer, only questions. “I could not begin to say,” he said. 

“You slept for quite an extraordinary amount of time.”

“I do not know that it has done me any good,” James said, frowning. “I fear it has taken me away from myself.”

“It has done you good,” Thomas told him firmly.

James finished the bread. He sat staring at the empty plate, looking more than ready for another night’s sleep. “I have slept alone,” he said, his voice shaking, “for a good long time. I have woken to nothing and no one.”

_Not any more_ , Thomas wanted to declare, affirm, vow. _Never again._ But he could not promise it, not here, and so his tongue was tied. 

“Will we be permitted to continue in this way?” James asked, looking up at Thomas, hope and distrust so plainly warring within him.

The thought of it entranced Thomas, and for a moment he could not speak. He forced himself not to fall into the fantasy, strove to keep his mind in the present and not in a speculative future life whose every night he could spend at James’s side. He had expected to see out his days here alone, untroubled by any more than the usual difficulties that might arise in a prison and on a plantation, and that future had proved itself as insubstantial and ephemeral as any other he might imagine. So he would not put his faith in any kind of future; he would continue to take each moment as it came. “I would hope so,” he said to James, doing his best to sound calm and confident. “You will be taken to meet with Mr Oglethorpe this morning, they said, and the decision ultimately will be his.”

“This morning?” said James, casting a sideways glance at the window. “There is not much time left for that.”

“Allowances,” Thomas said.

James nodded and rose slowly to his feet. Thomas stood with him and, having resisted this long, had no power left with which to refrain from walking around the table and taking James into his arms once again. 

“I never imagined,” James said, holding onto Thomas with the same desperate strength as the day before, that same strength Thomas felt coursing through his own body. “I never thought –”

“No,” said Thomas. “Nor did I.”

Vibrations started to run through James then, and Thomas’s heart began to race. He walked James back to the bed, and James offered no resistance when Thomas guided him to sit down. “I am not –” he said, shaking his head like a fly was bothering him. “I cannot seem to –”

Thomas knelt before him, met his eyes and rested a steadying hand on his thigh.

“God,” said James, closing his eyes and tilting his head upwards. “You are too much.”

Thomas took his hand away.

James snapped his eyes back open and looked down at Thomas. “No,” he said, his voice ragged and muscles twitching in his cheek. “You are too much, and I need all of it.”

He was not remotely well. He was not in a state to speak to Mr Oglethorpe, and yet the alternative was a visit from the plantation doctor and a ceding of this territory which Thomas wanted to belong only to him and James. He did not want to put James in anybody else’s hands; he belonged in Thomas’s alone. “I will go with you to speak to Mr Oglethorpe,” he said. “I will stay with you.”

“It is better you do not,” James said, his voice not strong but his words definite. “I can no longer hold all of myself in my head at one time. I cannot be all these people that I have been.” His eyes were dry but Thomas heard the tears in his voice, thin and strained. “I do not want you to see the man that I have been. Not all of him, as I will need to speak of with Oglethorpe. I cannot – he existed because you were gone. It was never meant to be –”

Thomas could not read the exact nature of James’s anguish then: grief, shame, remorse, guilt, fear, remembered pain. All he could do was remain kneeling where he was and meet James’s gaze without doubt or hesitation. He had never flinched from the darker parts of James before; he would not begin now. Whatever depths James had sunk to, Thomas would need to know them to be able to raise him out of them. There was nothing in the universe more important than doing so.

James passed a shaking hand over his face. “Please sit,” he said, laying that hand flat on the bed beside him, fingers compulsively smoothing over the bedclothes.

Thomas rose and sat beside James on the bed, taking up his hand and holding it, as they had sat the day before in the shade by the main house. Thomas had a hundred things to say, a thousand thoughts he was impatient to express, but they could wait, all of them, until James had said anything he might wish to. 

So there was quiet for a time. James sat deep in thought, and Thomas watched him and waited. 

Eventually James drew in a slow breath and spoke. “There will be no consequences of yesterday?” he asked cautiously. “I am put in here with you regardless?”

It took Thomas a moment to realise what James was referring to, and when he did a vast, deep sadness came over him. He had been living on this plantation for over a decade and had become accustomed to its principles and its practices, where James had not. The old anger rose in Thomas, but it had not the strength to compete with the sympathy he felt for James and the tenderness he longed to soothe him with. “It is of little concern here,” he said, remembering the moment he had had this realisation for himself and how difficult it had been for him to fully comprehend. “This place has saved no small number of men from the gallows.” He gave James a moment to absorb that statement, though it would take far longer than a moment for the import of it to sink in. “There will be no consequences of yesterday.”

James did not believe it. Thomas saw it in the stiff way he held himself, in his crinkled forehead and his fixed and unmoving stare.

“Nor were the events of yesterday any great revelation to anybody,” Thomas said, as James seemed beyond speech for the moment. “I have spoken of you, and of us. My own tendencies are a matter of public record here, if not elsewhere.”

James’s lips quirked at that. “Tendencies,” he said, a gleam of true amusement shining in his eyes.

Thomas felt himself smile as well, but he had more to say on this topic that should not be delayed. “Mr Oglethorpe is a good man,” he said. “He will give his approval to our living thus so long as he believes there is no danger in it to you, me or his plantation.”

“And is there any?” 

“I would like to think not,” said Thomas.

“There has always been danger in this,” said James.

“Yes.”

“But we are not in England now.”

“No, we are not.”

Thomas turned his head to look at James and saw him chewing on his cheek, crinkles of thought around his eyes and a frown on his face.

“He is a good man, and intelligent,” Thomas said again.

“If he decides to separate us, is there anything to be done but accept that decision?”

Thomas squeezed James’s hand tighter. He did not allow the thought to upset him. “I have petitioned once for a change in lodgings,” he said. “When David Mortimer came here, when I saw his difficulties, I volunteered to be put up with him. I was not privy to the decision-making, but the request was granted.”

“And where is this Mr Mortimer now?” James asked abruptly, looking pointedly around the room. “He has been moved, has he, on my account, without having a say in it himself?”

“If I am allowed the choice, I choose you,” Thomas said intently. “There is no question of it. One might see it as a kindness that Mr Oglethorpe did not require me to make that choice, that instead he acted for me in this way.”

James exhaled sharply. “One might,” he said, and then he was silent.

Thomas did not wish to think about the power Mr Oglethorpe held over them all; there was nothing to be gained by doing so. “James,” he said, preferring to focus on the joy of that name on his lips. “How did you learn of this place?”

It was a long time before James answered him. “Silver found it out,” he said. “I don’t know how he did. He said that prominent families in London used a secret location near Savannah to make their problems disappear. He sent Morgan to find out if you had been one of those problems.”

_John_ , Thomas thought. “John Silver,” he said. “It was his note that Adams read to you.”

James nodded. “I will tell you about him,” he said wearily, “but not today. I cannot speak of it today.”

“What would you speak of, then?”

“You,” said James. “I would speak of you.”

“Ah.”

“Are you well?”

That question, asked with such sincerity and such awareness of its magnitude, seized Thomas’s throat and brought tears to his eyes. _Not as I was_ , he wanted to say. _Not remotely like I was._ But he did not know how to voice unpalatable truths about himself as James did; he did not know how to step past his own discomfort and confess to things that pained him. “I am better,” he said, which was not a lie but only the barest beginning of the truth.

James was not fooled by the evasion, but nor did he reproach Thomas for it. “So am I,” he said, rubbing his thumb gently along Thomas’s, “as of yesterday. Though I hardly know who it is I am supposed to be any more.”

The knocks on the door came then, brisk and authoritative, as Thomas had long been expecting.

“Come,” Thomas called out, holding more tightly onto James’s hand when he went to pull it away. James resisted a moment then yielded, taking a long, deep breath and gripping Thomas’s hand firmly once more.

Adams opened the door but did not come in. 

“Thomas, you’re reporting to Cartwright in the east field,” he said, standing on the threshold and barely glancing at the two of them sat on the bed. “Mr Oglethorpe requests that Mr McGraw join him for lunch today, if his health will allow.”

“My health will allow,” James said. 

"He’ll receive you now, then,” Adams said, glancing at him warily. James removed his hand from Thomas’s and walked over to where the shoes had been left for him on the floor.

Thomas sat a moment paralysed by a sudden, all-encompassing fear that if James left his sight he would never come back into it again, that he would vanish as mysteriously as he had arrived, and as completely. He could not breathe, and he could not think. He could not let him leave. He must not let him leave.

Then James stood before him and offered a hand. Thomas took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. James leaned in very close. “I am not broken by what has happened,” he said, his breath soft on Thomas’s lips. “I am not afraid of what is about to happen. I will see you again very soon.”

“I love you,” Thomas said, leaning his forehead down to rest on James’s. “Please ensure that you return to me.”

“I will,” James said, his eyes flickering over Thomas’s face before looking directly into his eyes, earnest and unwavering. “I promise.”

* * *

The moment the whistle blew to signal the end of work for the day, Thomas picked up his tools and walked the length of the plantation to return them to their shed, ignoring William Cunynghame’s attempt to speak to him before he left the field. He did feel a little faint – there were tremors in his hands and a fluttery feeling in his chest – but he had only worked half the day, and what he wanted most of all was not food in his stomach but James back within his reach. So he walked past the kitchens without turning his head toward them and took long strides down the path to his lodgings, where he hoped fervently that James would be waiting for him.

The first thing Thomas saw as he approached his cabin was Nathan Wellesbury stationed outside it, and he felt suddenly cold, though the evening was warm and he had been walking as fast as his legs would allow him. 

“Stand down, Thomas,” Wellesbury called out from his comfortable slouch, waving a hand for Thomas to calm himself. “I’m only here as a precaution. Everyone’s alive and well, and I’d ask you not to ruin that for me by worrying yourself into any kind of desperate state.”

Thomas slowed down, but not by much. Wellesbury stepped forward to greet him, a sardonic gleam in his eye as there always was, wisps of dark hair around his ears and brow where they had escaped their tie. “Mr Oglethorpe requested me here as a general disincentive for anyone to try anything,” he said to Thomas, flickering his fingers in the general direction of the other cabins and the main house and then running them along the beginnings of the beard he was growing.

The cabin door opened and James came out of it, barefoot on the sun-warmed wooden platform that extended a little way out from the door. There was something different about him; it took Thomas a moment to realise that he had trimmed his beard so it now grew short and even across his jaw. Thomas felt a pang of loss for the old one, though he had not known it much more than a day. “There’s your man,” Wellesbury said to James, indicating Thomas with a jab of the thumb. “And that’s me relieved of my post.”

“It’s a relief to us both,” James said tartly.

Wellesbury laughed, equally relaxed as he was amused. “Who’d have thought a pirate king wouldn’t like being told what to do,” he said to Thomas. “But then I myself am not overly fond of telling people what to do, so I suppose we’re square. The real predicament here is that he doesn’t like any of my jokes, and believe me, I’ve tried them all.”

Thomas was not in the least interested in Wellesbury’s banter, and James was paying him no attention whatsoever, preferring to look Thomas over from head to toe. Wellesbury realised as much and laughed again. “Relieved of my post,” he said. “Right. Well, Mr McGraw, it’s been a pleasure.”

“It hasn’t,” James informed Thomas. Wellesbury threw him an ironic salute, nodded to Thomas and set off down the path out of the neighbourhood, untying his hair and then retying it as he walked. James watched him go, frowning, as Thomas came the rest of the way to the door.

“So?” Thomas asked, the afternoon’s suspense all catching up to him in a rush. James was here, which boded well, and he looked well enough – standing upright, gaze steady and posture relaxed – but then he always had been skilled at presenting himself in ways that others would wish to see.

“Mr Oglethorpe does not like me,” James said bluntly. “But I understand his philosophy and believe I can abide by his rules. I think we have come to understand one another.”

“He does not like you,” Thomas repeated, his spirits flagging. He had been certain James would have been able to make a reasonably good impression, and he had thought that Mr Oglethorpe would be able to see James McGraw as well as Captain Flint. James had been popular with his superiors and always well-liked by those he truly wished to please. Surely he had wished to please Mr Oglethorpe.

“He demanded only honesty, and so I was perfectly honest with him.” A crack showed in James’s studiously calm demeanour then – a twitch, a grimace, a sudden tension – before it was suppressed again. “I have earned his trust and his dislike in equal measure, which I think is more than fair.”

“You have been perfectly honest, and you have earned his trust, and he does not like you,” Thomas said slowly. “This is the result of your conversation.”

“I rather gave the game away,” James said, leaning back now against the wall of the cabin, looking out and away from Thomas. “I told him I did all of it because of what was done to you and me. I told him that I attempted to change the world for the better and came up short and that now I have the chance to live what I longed for all those years, I do not intend to throw it away for anything. I told him I would do nothing but abide by his rules, if it meant I could now live my life with you.”

There was joy, of course, that James was here and loved him, but Thomas was deeply grieved that in all the years since their separation, James had never allowed himself to move on from it. He had held on where Thomas had learned to let go, and Thomas could not begin to imagine the pain of it. He would have long since been gone from this earth had he attempted to do such a thing; he had nothing approaching James’s fortitude or his resilience.

“Let’s go inside,” said James. “I understand the men will all be coming back before long, and I have no desire to meet any of them today.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, following James to the door. “They will be returning soon.”

“How did you find them this afternoon?”

Thomas hesitated on the threshold, uncertain as to the specific intention of the question. James walked to the mantelpiece and examined the grain of the wood with a closeness of attention that spoke of distraction, not true interest, as Thomas closed the door behind them. Thomas noted that he had moved the second cot, which had not been slept in since it had been David’s, to lie directly alongside the one he and Thomas had shared. 

James’s nostrils flared when Thomas remained silent, and he elaborated on his question. “Am I known as Flint among them, or has that been kept quiet?”

“It is spoken of,” Thomas told him. “I have been asked a great many questions today that I have been unable to answer, even were I inclined to do so.”

“Whereas I have answered everything that has been put to me, and in no small detail,” James said wearily. “Not for the last time, it would seem, if my story is to be known and speculated upon all throughout this place.”

“The opinions of men you do not know still weigh heavily on your mind, then?”

James smiled half a smile, laughed and shook his head, as though he remembered an old joke that still tickled him. “I have spent a dozen years courting the good opinion of men who did not merit the least of my attention,” he said. “I have been able to survive only because of the strength of the image I cultivated among them. There is a certain state of mind that one develops when one’s life and the pursuit of one’s life’s mission lies ultimately in the hands of pirates who fancy themselves democratic.”

“There is no democracy to be found here,” said Thomas, his head whirling with the irony of such an assurance. “There is no question of that.”

“And very few pirates, I imagine,” James said. 

“Yes,” said Thomas. “I think you are our first.”

“How lucky for me.”

Thomas went and sat down on one side of their now much larger bed and gestured for James to join him. James moved slowly toward him, burdened as much now by his thoughts as he was by the lingering weakness of his body. As soon as he was seated, Thomas’s hand reached out of its own accord and touched his side, squeezed his shoulder and cupped the back of his neck. A shadowy smile crossed James’s face and then was gone again. Thomas withdrew his hand and clasped both together in his lap. Not only had James had his beard seen to, but he had washed, and most of the blood was gone from his hair. He smelled of soap and clean linen and no longer of the sea. Thomas wanted to take him in his arms and breathe him in deeply and never, ever let him go.

“I imagine you have some questions,” James said. 

Thomas had a great many questions, so few of which he thought right to ask at this time. “I do,” he said. “I have more questions than there are stars in the sky.”

James’s eyes flickered upward, though they sat indoors. “I will answer them.”

There was so much Thomas wanted to know, but he was acutely aware that James had undergone this process already with Mr Oglethorpe and did not wish to compel him to answer any more questions than he was comfortably able. As eager as Thomas was to hear James’s story, he would not interrogate James in any way in order to find it out. He could say as much or as little as he wished, and Thomas would not complain.

“Thomas,” James said. “I will answer your questions.”

Of most immediate concern, Thomas considered, were the questions Mr Oglethorpe had already asked and the answers that James had given them. Once Thomas knew what those had been, he would be best placed to navigate the next few days, the next week or two, as James adjusted to the plantation and the plantation adjusted to him.

So he asked his question. “What did you speak of with Mr Oglethorpe today?”

“He first asked if I came here voluntarily,” James said. Thomas remembered the rawness of James’s wrists the previous day and forced himself not to look at them now. “I had no easy answer for him.”

That brought Thomas out of his thoughts of chains and captivity. “Did you not come voluntarily?”

James’s lips parted and paused a moment before he spoke. “I chose to come,” he said. “It was a choice made under duress. I did not know for certain that you would be here when I made that choice. I had … reason to doubt that you would be. That is what I told Oglethorpe, and it is the truth. I can say no more about it for the moment.”

“Very well,” said Thomas. “We needn’t discuss any of it. There will be other days and other nights.”

James shook his head. “It is not right that you know so little. I was obliged to tell Oglethorpe a great deal, and I found it easier in the telling than I had expected. You are the one who ought to be told these things, if you wish to hear them, and I do not want to keep you in ignorance. So ask, and I will answer.”

“What else did he ask you?”

James sighed before he spoke. “He asked if I felt remorse for my crimes, if I had sought absolution. He asked my justification for all manner of things Captain Flint is said to have done, a number of which were based in truth. He asked how I could be confident that you would welcome my reappearance, even after all I had done. He asked if I was not ashamed to face you.”

“He asked you that,” Thomas said, hearing his voice colder than he had heard it in an age. 

“He could not do otherwise,” said James, and hearing him so conciliatory did nothing but increase Thomas’s ire. “You see things differently because of our history, but consider his perspective. He has never known me. He does not know who I was, only who I became. I imagine he is also reconsidering your character, now that you have welcomed me back. I have sullied your name as well as my own by the things I have done.”

Thomas realised he was glaring at James and looked past him instead at the empty air, hearing his heart pounding in his ears. “I was welcomed here with gentleness,” he said. “I was given time to heal.”

“You were as innocent as a man can be,” James said with sorrow in his eyes. “You were accused of no crime and no wrongdoing. Why should you not have been welcomed and supported?”

“I was harmless, you mean,” said Thomas, the words coming out sharper than he had intended.

“You had come from Bethlem Royal Hospital, unjustly imprisoned and mistreated,” James said plainly, “not from declaring war on civilisation itself. You were not a murderer, nor a pirate, nor an avowed enemy of the British Empire. Mr Oglethorpe has welcomed a monster into this sanctuary he has built, and it is only to be expected that he will test its claws before he lets it roam freely.”

Thomas took James’s hand in one of his and ran his other thumb over James’s fingers and his heavily scarred knuckles, reminding himself of the futility of anger at a thing he could not control. “No claws,” he said.

James’s smile was small and soft, and Thomas’s heart raged that twelve years of smiles had been stolen from him, from both of them, that instead James had waged war on the world alone while Thomas had been locked away from it entirely. 

But, strictly speaking, James had not waged his war alone. He had not been alone at the beginning, as Miranda had been with him, and nor had he been alone at the end, not when John Silver, at least, had called him friend. Thomas sat and let his anger gradually seep out of him, holding James’s hand in both of his and resting it on his lap, thinking of friendship between pirates and the multitude of forms that that friendship could take.

“Did Mr Oglethorpe ask you about John Silver?” he asked once he felt master of himself once more.

James looked at him intently, that familiar twitch in his cheek telling Thomas that this, of all that they had discussed, required deeper consideration on James’s part. “He did,” he replied. “He asked me why Silver demanded my admittance and not your release.”

“I have wondered the same thing myself.”

“I will tell you what I told Oglethorpe,” said James. “The truth. John Silver wished to remove me permanently from a domain I had claimed as my own and over which I wielded great influence. He knew that the only way to guarantee my compliance in this regard, the only way to be rid of me without shooting me point blank, was to send me somewhere I would willingly go and never wish to leave.” There were vows and sacraments in the look James gave Thomas then. “There is only one place in the world that could be, and he knew what it was.”

“You had told him of me.”

“He asked.” James was subdued, speaking plainly and without affect where Thomas had rather been expecting an intensification of emotion. “After Miranda died, he made himself my partner, much as I initially tried to prevent him. He took responsibility for me, and I had no strength left to resist the partnership he sought. I had no more desire to resist it. By that point, there was nothing left of the man who had despised him, that version of Flint who still held onto who he had been before all this began. So Silver and I had grown close, after a time, and on the eve of the war we were to embark on together, he asked me where it had all started. Nobody had asked me that before, not so directly. Nobody else would have dared. Nobody else, frankly, was in the least bit interested. But he asked me, and I saw no reason not to tell him the truth. I had spoken of you before, of course, to him and to others. _Miranda and I and Miranda’s husband_ , it always was. _Miranda’s husband Thomas._ I did not realise how heavily that had weighed on me until I finally told him the entire truth, from beginning to end, when he asked me. If I did not tell him then the story of James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton, I feared there might soon be nothing left of me but Flint.” He smiled ruefully, shaking his head. “John Silver was known for his powers of persuasion and famed for his silver tongue and his quick mind, but more than anything he always did know how to listen and listen carefully, and how to apply what he had learned. This may well be his greatest triumph in that respect.”

Thomas was himself listening carefully to James’s manner of speaking, watching emotions he did not fully recognise flitting across his face. None of this – not James’s reflections, not the note Silver had written – explained the manner of their parting. None of it shed any light on why Silver would have brought James here or why he would have wanted rid of him in the first place. 

“Years ago, I told Eleanor Guthrie that all I wanted to do was walk inland with my oar,” James went on, still calm and quiet. “I did not need to tell Silver any such thing. He had been observing me closely from the very beginning, when I wanted him dead and he was negotiating his survival day by day, and the keenness of that observation did not falter as the relationship between us changed. So he knew I wanted an end to it all, to the struggle and the sorrow and the never-ending obstacles that sprang up in our path, but he knew equally that I would never choose to end it of my own free will. He understood that I was in this thing to the bitter end, but he did not want to live a life consumed by war. He did not want to see the ones he loved consumed by it, so he set about ending it by whatever means he had available to him. Without Flint there would be no war, and without war there could be no Flint. He could have shot me, if he had wished to, and that would have been an end of it. But he did not wish it.”

Long John Silver, Thomas had heard, was a vengeful giant of a man, second in monstrosity only to his partner, Captain Flint. He was wicked, ruthless and remorseless, a man both loved and feared by the villains who called him king. Thomas would reflect later on this new picture that James had painted for him, this glimpse of an insightful, scheming man who would seek to put an end to an entire war because he did not like the idea of it, because he did not want to see his loved ones hurt. 

Thomas had always argued that pirates were men who, given the opportunity and requisite guidance, could find their way back to civilisation no matter how long they had been apart from it. Whether they had severed themselves from the community of man or been forcibly separated from it, they ought to be given the chance to return and, indeed, encouraged to do so. Once the conditions that had led to such a dreadful state of affairs had been remedied, unity would be possible once more, and prosperity could return to New Providence Island. 

He wondered now, for the very first time, what the Republic of Pirates might have become were it given a chance at legitimacy free from the threat of obliteration or assimilation by any colonial empire: a confederacy with its own will and its own character, led by the real men behind Captain Flint and Long John Silver and not defined by their monstrous reputations. 

“You ask rather fewer questions than Oglethorpe did,” James said. “You do not do me the mercy of driving me from one topic to another but let me elaborate and elucidate. I fear I will never stop, unless you are to stop me.”

“Why would I ever wish you to stop?” Thomas asked quietly. “I thought to never hear your voice again.”

“And I yours,” James said pointedly. “I would like to be reminded of it more than occasionally.”

Thomas put a hand up around James’s head, drew him down to Thomas’s shoulder and held him there. “Here I am,” he murmured. 

James rested quietly against him, saying nothing.

“You said that he did not want to see the ones he loved consumed by war,” Thomas said, asking so much more than he had intended to ask tonight. “Was it love between you?”

“We were close,” James said, hoarse and soft. “I do not know what he would call it. I do not know what I would call it. I know James McGraw could never have loved him, but perhaps Flint did. I might have. We had been a long time linked in enmity and then a long time in partnership. When there is one person closer to you than anyone else in the world, when you have been saved and betrayed by each other more times than you can count, when you have fought together and suffered together and triumphed together, when he has proven himself to be your equal and your greatest ally and your greatest danger, is that love? That is what we were to each other … I do not think he would have called it love.”

“He ended your war to save your life.”

James shook his head a little. “Not just mine,” he said. “There was a woman he loved, and their love was untouched by the history of malice and manipulation between him and me. They had forged a strong connection, but in philosophy and temperament they had little common ground. She and I were far more alike, though we shared nothing more than a mutual understanding and a mutual commitment. She was as fixed on this war as I was – a Maroon woman, daughter of a queen, determined to win freedom for her people. I was not a rival to his relationship with her, but our shared war was a threat to the claim he felt he had on her. Madi and I would have risked anything and everything to see England brought to her knees. It was everything we had worked for, and we were ready to see it done.”

“But Silver was not.”

“Their relationship will not recover from what he has done to it and to her,” James said quite factually. “He shared her bed, called her wife and always dealt with her in good faith, up to the point where he very methodically dismantled the one thing that he knew meant everything in the world to her. That is a betrayal far beyond anything he could do to me, who has known what he was from our very first meeting. I knew to expect both lies and betrayal as it suited him, where Madi did not. When he sought to protect both Madi and I by betraying all the trust we had placed in him, it was a manoeuvre with which I was intimately familiar. I have used him as ill as he has used me. In that respect at least, we were a perfect pair.”

“If this Madi is anything like you, as you say, I fear greatly for John Silver.”

“He will survive it,” James said, gravelly and flat. “Whatever she might do or say to him, he will bear the pain of it and continue on his way. He is for himself, and he will remain so.”

“You said this morning you did not wish to speak of him,” said Thomas.

“I do not know what I want,” James said. He still had not lifted his head from Thomas’s shoulder. “A truth unspoken is a truth that cannot be tarnished by its exposure to the world, but in the end such a truth is a stunted thing, kept preserved and unmoving as the world grows and changes and leaves it behind. I was persuaded not so long ago to prostrate myself before an empire and tell it a truth that had never before seen the light of day, to seek the mercy of that empire in exchange for its clemency and its assistance. I would have willingly exposed that truth to the world, and myself along with it, in the hope that some greater good might finally come of it all.”

“But yours was not the only truth revealed that day.”

“No,” said James. “And not every truth brings clarity and healing into the world when spoken aloud.”

“No indeed.”

“But I did tell mine to Peter before his secret came out, and I would have told it to Whitehall, and I would have shared it with all the world, were I given the opportunity. Now I have told it to Oglethorpe as he demanded, and I have sought his goodwill and his mercy, and I will tell it to you by my own compulsion and your damnable silence, and none of those three stories will be the same, told as they have been to different people, at different times, to serve entirely different ends.”

“How so?”

“For one thing, Oglethorpe did not ask me if I loved John Silver,” James said. There was faint amusement in his voice at that, but it left as quickly as it had come. “You have not asked me how I justify to myself or to God the raids I led after Charles Town. Or at least you have not yet asked me. When it comes to Peter, when I shook his hand on that day I thought it the culmination of all that had come before. I thought I had reached the height of my fame and the depth of my depravity and there was nothing left but to answer for both and in so doing secure the future of one small island in the Bahamas that never brought anyone anything other than grief. I cannot now look on any of those events in the same way, or tell them in the same way I told them to him, knowing as I now know that they were themselves only the beginning of something far –” James sighed. “When Silver asked me where my war had begun, I had never told our story before to any living soul. In the telling of it to him, it served a purpose. I told him that story to explain the path my life had taken; I did not tell it in its own right. I have never told it in its own right. I do not know what that story is, any more, without all that came after it.”

“I have told our story,” Thomas said. “I have told it a dozen times at least. Every man here has his story to tell, and I have been here longer than most.”

“That telling will fade,” James said heavily. “As soon as they all know who I am, the story as you or I might tell it will be overcome by all the things I have done or am said by others to have done.” He let out a low gusty laugh. “In coming here, I have ruined the last corner of the world where my good name had endured. Flint now pervades it all.” He spoke more quietly then, and with such a deep sadness something twisted in Thomas’s stomach. “I never intended to stay so long in his shoes.”

“Would you like to hear it?” Thomas offered.

James finally lifted his head, then, and turned to look at Thomas. His eyes were barely focused, and his face was slack with exhaustion of the spirit as well as the flesh. “Hear what?”

“Our story,” said Thomas, “as I have told it.”

“I do not know that I could bear to hear it,” James said frankly. “Not while the things I have discussed with Oglethorpe still linger fresh in my mind.”

“Another time, then,” said Thomas. “Another evening.”

James nodded. “I am to be shown the ropes tomorrow,” he said. “I imagine we will not see much of each other by day. I was given that impression quite strongly.”

“I will gladly take the nights,” Thomas said, thinking of the hundreds, thousands of nights they had unfolding before them, allowing himself this one moment of weakness in imagining a future that could be both predictable and paradisiacal.

James lay his head back down on Thomas’s shoulder. They sat a while like that, unmoving, until Thomas mustered the last of his energy, toed off his shoes and lay down diagonally across the two conjoined cots, pulling James down with him as he did.

“Tomorrow we will talk about you,” James said, curling into Thomas’s side, his head finding its place on Thomas’s chest and his hand resting on his breastbone as Thomas’s went to wrap around his shoulder. “I will notice if you try to get out of it.”

Thomas kissed the top of James’s head and was rather stupidly surprised that his lips met prickles and not the smooth hair he had expected. “As you like,” he said, running his teeth along first his top lip then the bottom to rid them of the sensation.

“I will notice if you try to get out of it,” James said again, clearly more than halfway asleep, only that single thought keeping him from going all the way under.

“Of course,” Thomas said.

James spoke again, but there were no words in it. Thomas closed his eyes, though sunlight still came through the windows, his stomach was empty and his mind was far too alive to even contemplate sleep. He had a great deal to think about and no shortage of time in which to do it. When sleep finally did take him, he would not be sleeping alone.


	6. A Story is Untrue - Day 2

Their party of five had arrived in Savannah toward the middle of Thursday afternoon, having walked for quite a few hours into the night and resumed their journey at the very break of dawn. Upon reaching the township, Mr Hands had walked away from them all without a word and Mr Morgan and Mr Gunn had remained, purportedly to assist James and Thomas with any business they might wish to conduct but principally, Thomas suspected, to keep an eye on James for just a little while longer.

Thomas had spoken with the English pirate, Mr Morgan, when they briefly encamped for the night, and he had been left with the very clear impression that he saw James as someone whose mind defied all understanding, whom he respected and held a very healthy fear of and whose compliance he would never take for granted. James did nothing to contradict such a characterisation either that night or the following morning; though he did not cause any disruption or delay, he persisted in maintaining an air of defiance, rarely spoke and declined to make either his thoughts or his intentions transparent.

Mr Morgan regarded Thomas himself with a quiet curiosity, but he had clearly been, if not a gentleman, then gentleman-like in his earlier life and did not give voice to that curiosity, for which Thomas was immensely grateful. Thomas’s overall impression of Mr Morgan was favourable, pirate or no, and when he had warned Thomas against James’s mood – _I wouldn’t try and talk to him, not when he’s like this –_ Thomas had heeded the warning. He had gone to join James, of course, where he sat some small distance away with his back against a wide tree trunk, his mien dark and unfriendly and his shaven head skull-like in the dim light, but he joined the silence that lived there rather than attempting to break it. He sat ninety degrees around from James under the tree he had chosen, the ground hard and sloped, and he did not feel unwelcome there.

Sleep had come to him slowly and fitfully, and when he had been woken by some combination of the dawn light and the sound of pirates readying themselves to go about their day, James had been sitting there still, his eyes closed but not making any real effort to feign sleep. When Mr Morgan had declared the resumption of their journey imminent, he had opened his eyes and risen to his feet smoothly and immediately, sparing Thomas only the briefest of glances and the others none at all before walking off toward the road.

Thomas had been content to walk by James’s side that morning and had understood perfectly well that nothing would be said between them. Indeed, he would rather share this moderately companionable silence than expose their relationship to these men any more than had already occurred. Thomas liked Mr Morgan well enough on first acquaintance, but he was wary of the quiet and watchful Mr Gunn and outright affronted by the behaviour of Mr Hands, who took every opportunity to glare at Thomas and had more than once referred to him acidly as “Flint’s sweetheart” in both James’s and Thomas’s hearing, along with some far less tactful epithets muttered only under his breath. Thomas had taken his cue from James and held his tongue. If Mr Hands found their company so intolerable, that was his concern and his concern only. If he hoped to provoke Thomas into some form of confrontation, he would be sorely disappointed. If he hoped to provoke James –

James did not display even the slightest hint of anger. He heard Mr Hands, certainly, and once or twice he glanced at Thomas to note his reaction to something that had been said, but he remained eerily calm and all but expressionless in the face of every stare and every comment. Thomas hoped very much that he truly was not affected by any of it; the alternative was that he was affected by it and it was all being buried so very deeply and thoroughly that its release might well be catastrophic. 

Whatever James may be thinking or feeling or consciously ignoring, Thomas understood very well why he kept his silence until the time came where they could, at long last, be properly alone together. 

But when Messrs Gunn and Morgan had left for their ship in the late afternoon, James’s mood, rather than lifting, had taken a turn for the worse. Where before he had been doing what he must to tolerate the company they kept, now he suppressed something unknown to Thomas, something dark and restless and agitated that Thomas had not seen before and could not name. Just as mysterious to Thomas was his own state of mind upon their departure, which he was frustratingly incapable of grasping. For more than a day he had been waiting for this moment, patiently enduring James’s mood and the eyes of the pirates and the interminable dust of the road. Now it had come, and they were finally, truly alone together, and James was not pleased but distressed by it, and Thomas began to wonder if the decision which had seemed so self-evidently correct the previous afternoon had perhaps merited more consideration than he had given it. His heart still leapt in his chest every time he looked at James – he was happy; he was _deliriously_ happy – but a voice was beginning to whisper in the back of his mind, reminding him of terrible mistakes he had previously made and observing how little it seemed he had learned from any of them.

The room they had was smaller than Thomas’s cabin at the plantation had been and only marginally larger than his cell in Bethlem, but it was upstairs and had a small window overlooking the street and, most importantly, a door that both closed and locked. They had it for the week and had not had to pay for it; the largesse from the pirates had rankled James, but Thomas had accepted it with relief and gratitude. He could not have borne spending this night in a common area, and it would certainly have been too much to ask of James, but Thomas still would have preferred the room to be a little larger.

He found himself pacing on aching feet as the afternoon faded into twilight: a few strides diagonally from the window to the door, a few more to the room’s battered and worn mule chest, which contained the entire sum of their worldly possessions, all purchased only a few hours earlier, then six paces directly across the room, past the foot of the bed and back to the window to begin the triangle again. James sat in a dreadful slouch in one of the chairs in the corner between the door and the window, fiddling with his beard and watching each step Thomas took with a closeness of attention that spoke not of interest but of distraction and delay.

Thomas had just reached the window when he heard a soft thud and a telltale clink of coins on the bed; he turned and saw a small brown pouch on the bedclothes that had not been there before. “Where did that come from?” he asked, looking at the depth of the indent it had made upon its landing. 

“A parting gift,” James said with a bitter twist to his mouth.

“From whom?”

James did not answer.

Thomas walked back to the mule chest, took out the bag of money that Mr Oglethorpe had given him and set it down on the bed beside the one James had produced. James glared twice as bitterly at the two bags as he had at the one, and Thomas glanced at the window, which was the next stop on his circuit and a much easier prospect to face than James and whatever devil he carried with him.

He considered the throbbing in his feet and the heaviness of his legs, admitted the folly of his pacing and went to sit with James, taking the chair with its back to the bed and facing him head-on.

“They attempt to buy my retirement,” James declared as soon as Thomas was in his eye line. “It is not for sale.”

“You said to me yesterday that you wanted to set yourself free from Captain Flint,” Thomas said, his voice just as declaratory.

James scoffed and slouched down even further in his chair; with his feet extended so far in front of him, the toe of his tall boots nearly reached Thomas’s soft shoes. “Captain Flint is retired,” he said. “There is no question of that. But it does not mean that the work he was doing must be abandoned. Captain Flint had his function; that which he sought to accomplish is yet undone. Such ambitions are not extinguished so easily. They are certainly not extinguished by two handfuls of coins and a very quiet farewell.”

Thomas saw James in his mind’s eye sitting rigidly upright in his seat, dressed smartly in blue and white, young and clean-shaven, a Navy officer who carried himself with pride and confidence. He saw James sitting before him now, draped over his chair like a hastily-flung coat, his legs spread long and wide and his head tilted back, weary and bloodstained. Thomas had not lived through pain and difficulty with James before, nor seen him stretched to the very edge of his capacity; now was quite an extraordinary time to start. He could afford to take no chances when it came to the situation they found themselves in and what they might make it. Thomas had his limits, and James must know them. “I will not be partner to a pirate,” Thomas said. “I will not be a party to it.”

James smiled at him without warning, true affection shining in his eyes, and the expression was achingly familiar despite everything that had changed. “I never thought that you would,” he said, his voice warm and amused. 

He was the same man, Thomas consciously reminded himself. A vast amount of time had passed and a great deal had happened since they had last seen each other, but James was still the same man, and Thomas could speak to him as he always had. The more he did so, the easier it would surely become. The more he did so, the sooner he would understand the things that had changed and the things that had not. “Then what is to be done?” he asked, the question simple and open-ended as he had asked them so many times before.

James shrugged, scratched at his beard and spoke with apparent unconcern. “I swear off the account.”

Thomas frowned. “You do.”

“I am not finished with England,” said James, “but I am finished with the sea.”

“So easily?”

“So easily.”

James spoke sincerely, as far as Thomas could tell, but the statement was more likely one of aspiration than of absolute fact or even genuine belief. The sea had ruled James’s life, in one way or another, right from its very beginning. Whether he loved or he loathed it, it coursed through his blood and sat in the very marrow of his bones. Thomas could well believe right now he wished to be rid of it; to be capable of doing so at a moment’s notice by a sheer act of will was something quite different. 

It was not lost on Thomas that James had answered his question very briefly and only in the most literal sense. Swearing off the account was one thing, and if James said he would do it, then he would. But Thomas had not forgotten the previous day’s conversation in the front field at the plantation. James had admitted the hold Flint had over him, and Thomas had seen something of the effect of it. He had seen how practised James had become at burying it. He did not like to doubt James, but neither could he dismiss the things he had seen, not when he had pledged himself to untangle it all and set it aright.

James sighed, sat up and leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together between them. He sought Thomas’s gaze and held it, earnest and unhesitating. “Do you really think I surrendered myself into hiscustody, came all this way, surrendered myself into Oglethorpe’s custody, got you out of there, put up with every fucking thing between that place and this one, refrained from snapping Hands’s neck all this time, just to find out that you don’t like or approve of piracy and say, _Oh well, then,_ and we go our separate ways? Do you think I did all of that only then to disregard you and continue to live my life as I had been living it when I thought you dead?”

He spoke in one breath of a life’s ambition that would not be easily extinguished and in the very next of a willing cessation of that pursuit in deference to Thomas’s wishes, as though that were the only thing that could ever conceivably be done. It was a situation that James apparently saw clearly but was dreadfully opaque to Thomas. He had felt a fog begin to lift from his mind when he had stepped through the plantation gate the day before, but it was not yet all the way dissipated and now set about thickening again, leaving Thomas feeling stultified and slow. “When you say you are not done, it does rather sound as though you intend to continue,” he said, trying to recall the precise words James had said that contradicted each other so he could present them and have them properly explained. But the fog lingered.

“I am finished with the sea,” James said again. “I am not finished with England.”

 _But England is across the sea_ , Thomas thought, and it was the retort of a six-year-old. “What does that mean?”

James hauled himself up off his chair, walked over to sit on the bed and began to take off his boots. 

Thomas was tired of asking questions and receiving no response to them. He had found it galling the first time it had happened yesterday, and his ire had only risen on each subsequent occasion. He wanted to speak to James man to man, as they had used to. He wanted honesty and had done with evasion. Silence was not and would never be an acceptable response to a question asked in good faith. 

“James,” he said, rising from his chair and facing James where he sat on the bed. “What does it mean?”

James sighed and set his boots down on the floor, tidy as he ever was. “You haven’t seen it,” he said, looking up at Thomas from under a small, careful frown. “You said to me that you thought the New World a sacred opportunity. You thought it could be a place better than England, a society founded on righteous principles the Old World resists. I believed that, and I believe it now, but time is escaping us. Such a thing becomes less and less likely as each season passes us by. The New World, as it is now taking shape, is nothing more than the Old World writ large. It is a playground for the worst of empire on a far grander scale, and I’m damned if I just stand back and watch it all happen.”

That said, he set about peeling off his socks.

“So you set yourself against it,” said Thomas. “You waged war against the world.”

“It will soon be too late,” said James, rolling up the socks and flexing his feet now his toes were free. “We had the opportunity and we were poised to take it, and now it is lost to us. That avenue and that methodology is spent, but there is time yet to try again through different means.” Thomas’s eye was caught by a long curved scar on James’s left ankle that had not been there the last time Thomas had seen him in this state of undress. It was odd that such an inconsequential thing could so capture his attention when James was finally speaking freely of the purpose he had found for his life. It was odd that James could lower his bare feet onto the floor and Thomas could be struck all at once by how terribly he had missed him for all these years.

“I remember something you said to me long ago,” he said, seeing glimpses of that scene before his mind’s eye. “You said that when people try to change the world, they fail for one simple and unavoidable reason.”

James looked Thomas directly in the eye. “Everyone else.”

“Indeed.”

“I had made it past that point.” James leaned down to tuck his rolled-up socks into one boot, before drawing his feet up onto the bed and sitting cross-legged like a child. 

Thomas had been so absorbed watching James settle himself that he surely could not have heard his answer correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

“I had an army,” said James. “I had allies. I had a treasury and access to resources. I had a battle strategy and men and women capable of implementing it. I was well past the point where _everyone else_ could have stood in my way, and yet here I am with nothing to show for it but a mere handful of coins and a week’s stay in a room barely big enough to stand up in.”

“For what reason?”

James swallowed as if a sudden bile had risen in his throat. “Sometimes it is not a matter of everyone else,” he said, his tone as poisonous as Thomas had ever heard it. “Sometimes one man, intelligent and determined and without the stomach for war, is enough to scupper it all.”

“Who is –”

“But there are paths that can be taken aside from open war,” James said, cutting Thomas off neatly mid-question. The words that followed were cold and resentful. “ _There’s always a way_ , he says.”

The frustrated yell that had been building in Thomas nearly found voice in that moment. He wanted to grab James and hold him still, to stand before him and demand that he answer questions that were asked of him, to tear down everything that stood between them and not waste a second more of the time they had been given with evasion, defensiveness or disguise. 

He did not have the courage to do it. He feared both James’s reaction and his own. It had been many, many years since Thomas had felt brave, and even then he suspected he had been possessed of more bloody-mindedness than courage. Even claiming his freedom, leaving the plantation and coming here with James had not been as much of a choice as an inevitability. Thomas had been powerless before it, as he was powerless here and now to assert himself as he felt he ought, as James would be expecting him to. James watched him now, quietly curious and in no way apologetic. Thomas swallowed his disappointment in himself and his disappointment in James, and he continued the conversation along the course James had directed it. “Such as?”

“Political machinations to divide and conquer the empires,” James said, businesslike, as though they had not just spent over a minute in uneasy silence, as though they had not spent twelve years apart and were back in Thomas’s study confidently developing a plan for the civilisation of Nassau. “Fomenting civil unrest. Targeted sabotage. Setting men and women free and giving them the tools to do as they will. Blackmail. Assassinations. Corruption of those in power. Widespread education and the redistribution of wealth. All of these things are possible, separately or together, but he denied us the war and proposed _nothing_ in its place. He did not even have the heart for that.”

And there it was again. _He_. This time, Thomas did not bother to ask. If James cut him off again, Thomas would either lose his temper or confirm his earlier capitulation by doing nothing at all; each of those outcomes was as unacceptable as the other, and so Thomas would not invite the circumstance.

But there were other paths that could be taken. Thomas walked over to the bed, slipped off his own shoes and climbed up to sit on the pillow, his back to the headboard. James turned to face him as he did, scooting back a little so Thomas did not have to bend his knees so severely in order to fit. There was much more room for James to have moved, as the bed was enormously large in the very small room, but he retreated only as far as was necessary and nowhere near the foot of the bed.

“Men will take the path of least resistance,” James continued, and his tone was calmer, more personal, now they sat across from each other on the bed. There was a softness in his eyes when he looked Thomas’s way, and his eyes lingered for a long moment before he looked away again. It was not quite the same degree of transformation as had used to come over him when the two of them were in this sort of proximity to each other, either in bed or out of it, but it was all the more striking for taking place even despite the circumstances they were in. Here was something, then, that still worked as it had used to.

James drew in a deep breath, looked at Thomas again and continued to speak, his voice suddenly much wearier and terribly flat. “A marginally easier life is held out to them,” he said, “and because they do not have confidence in a path that might lead somewhere better, they take those scraps and decide they will be content with them.” Thomas did not know if James had slept at all the previous night, or the night before it, or the night before that; he did not know the circumstances that had brought him to Savannah in chains. James spoke of generalities and of matters of principle, shying away from specifics rather than volunteering them. Anything Thomas wanted to know it seemed he would have to extract, and the price of that extraction was not one Thomas was certain he could pay.

“You were wrong in London to hold court with your peers,” James said, and though his words addressed Thomas directly it sounded more as though he were thinking out loud. “Change will never be driven by those who sit close to the table. It cannot. It can come only from those howling outside in the cold and the dark, who find voice together and determine never to submit.”

Thomas did not want to see the world as bleak and grim as that, but James’s words carried with them the ring of truth. He had sincerely believed that they had been on the brink of something in London, but in the final reckoning they had not come anywhere close to it. Peter, who had sat closest of them all to the proverbial table, had been bought, and the rest of them forcibly expelled into the night. Thomas had been rejected and abandoned and exiled, yet he had never thought to take up howling. Instead he had sought to accept that which was unacceptable, to take up the hand he was dealt and live the life he had before him, hoping that the two people he loved best in all the world would find happiness without him. He had more than enough evidence before him to know that James had been very far from happy for a very long time. The question of Miranda –

“That was my mistake,” said James ruefully, and Thomas was startled and disoriented by the different paths along which their thoughts had taken them. “I made myself partner to a man who always did crave the easier life, who never made anything of his own but readily took what he was offered by anybody who would offer it or who left it unattended even for a moment, who saw no benefit for himself in a war for a better world, only what he stood to lose in it. I believed for a while that the bonds he had formed, true bonds that they were, had tied him to our efforts. By the time I realised they had had the precise opposite effect, that he would sacrifice the war in order to protect those bonds, it was too late for us all.”

“Is this Long John Silver?” Thomas asked, reckless as to the question and its answer now that they sat so close together and giving James no opportunity to prevent its being asked.

James grimaced. His response was immediate, for all that it did not directly answer the question. “Long John Silver is a fabrication,” he said. “That name is yet another gift of power to a man who never wanted it, asked for it or ought to have been given it. John Silver was a petty thief and an opportunist who made himself indispensable to me and my crew for the sake of his own survival, who pursued so vigorously his own best interests with such success that he rose to stand beside me at the head of it all. I knew what he was, right from the beginning. He told me what he was. He showed me time and time again, and I looked the other way and allowed it all to happen because I –”

He bit off the words and became still, closing his eyes and taking in long, slow breaths, suddenly profoundly distant from Thomas despite being seated only inches from his feet. Thomas had taken note of the anger, the disgust, the self-recrimination and the grief in what James had been saying, and this sudden absence of emotion, this rigid self-control and denial, was far more disturbing to him than any of those had been. Thomas nudged him with a toe and saw a flicker in his blank expression. He stretched his leg out to press and hold against the outside of James’s knee; Thomas was here, and if James needed to be reminded of that, then reminded he would be. Thomas would not let him fall away.

James opened his eyes, and there were traces of tears in them. “It is as an old enemy and old ally of mine once said,” he said. “They say, _Give us your submission, and we will give you the comfort you need_. He never did, and I was resolved not to.” James’s eyes moved over Thomas’s face inch by inch, his expression wistful. Thomas sat and bore the scrutiny, wondering how much that had changed inside him was visible to the eye.

“John Silver ended your war and sent you here,” he said once James’s eyes had ended their journey and rested finally, intently, on Thomas’s mouth. “To me.”

James’s gaze lifted from Thomas’s lips to his eyes. “Yes.” He sighed deeply, grimaced and reached around behind him. “What do you wish to do next?” he asked, setting the two bags of coins down between them. “We have money, and we have our freedom.”

“The money you name first,” Thomas observed, withdrawing his leg and tucking his foot back in by his body. 

“One unfortunate corollary of freedom,” James said wryly. “It contains within it fundamentally the freedom to starve.”

“Then let’s see what we have.” Thomas passed one bag to James and kept one himself, and they upended them into twin piles on the bed.

Thomas was dazzled by the number and the sheer variety of the coins that landed on the bed. James gave a dissatisfied grunt and ran his fingers through them, sorting one denomination from another with practised ease. The coins clinked against his rings as he did.

“Forty Spanish dollars and twelve pounds,” he said. “Roughly speaking.”

Thomas picked up a dollar coin and felt its texture and its weight. He ran the tip of his finger up one of the two pillars, across the crown and down the pillar on the other side, wondering what James had been doing in the year this coin had been minted. 1712, if Thomas was not mistaken, had seen Mark Higgins arrive onto the plantation in early February. John Bolton and Jacob Gusset had come in May, Tim Larkey in August, Peter Fox in November and John Lawrence three days before Christmas. “A man I knew on the plantation had a dollar for a time,” said Thomas. “It was as much money as I saw in more than a decade.”

“When I was eight or nine, I used to run along the beach early of a morning, looking for shipwrecks and treasure chests,” James said, running his hand through the coins to mix them together again. “A girl from the village had found a shilling from Cromwell’s day, and I was determined to have one of my own.” He flicked through the coins, his eyes gone distant. “ _Pax Quaeritur Bello_ , it said.” 

“Ah,” said Thomas.

“Yes,” said James, looking up at him with something that was almost a grin. “Ah.”

Thomas could only guess at the real value of the currency they now held, far removed from the world of finance as he had been, but by any reasonable estimation it seemed rather a lot. “It has been a long time since I moved in the world,” he said, breaking the small silence that had fallen over the room.

“I know,” said James, sorrow and regret plain in his voice.

“You ask me what I wish to do next, and I cannot begin to comprehend the question.”

“There is no hurry to do anything at all,” James said quietly. “This is a small fortune, truth be told, and there is nobody in the world who expects anything of you.”

“You expect nothing of me?” Thomas asked, stung.

James shook his head, his brow wrinkled in thought. “I ask nothing of you,” he clarified, though seeming less than satisfied with his response as he made it.

A foul taste came into Thomas’s mouth, and he could not rid himself of it. It was bad enough that James’s proclamations were so inconsistent, that he vacillated so dramatically between resolve and surrender, between powerful emotion and calm intimacy. It was hard to know how aware he was of this, whether he expected Thomas to seize on it and challenge him. Thomas could forgive it, when he thought about it sensibly. But to say such a thing to Thomas, to ask nothing and expect nothing of him, that was too much to bear. The indignity of it, the protest of his injured pride, did more to clear Thomas’s head than anything that had come before it. “Why would you not?” he asked, feeling his voice strengthen and his thoughts come into focus.

James squinted at Thomas as though he were the blazing sun, and he considered his words at length before he spoke them. “Because you have been held prisoner for a dozen years and have been free for barely more than one single day,” he suggested mildly.

“I want you to ask things of me,” Thomas said firmly. “I want you to have expectations of me, and I want to know what they are. I have been a captive for a dozen years, as you say, and I intend to waste no time in returning to the fullness of life. Enough time has been lost as it is. I will not lose even a moment more.” 

James said nothing. He did not even look like doing so, so mesmerised did he seem by what Thomas had said. The only hint of the turmoil Thomas knew he felt was in the rapid rise and fall of his chest, but even those breaths, for all that they came far too quickly one after the other, were strictly contained.

Thomas could not always be gentle with James, as he did not wish James to always be gentle with him. Now, in this moment, where he felt like something more than a shadow, where he was recognisable to himself as something like that which he had been before, he would seize the opportunity to be as hard-hearted as he could bear to be. “And I have not forgotten my promise to you,” he said. “I have not forgotten what has held you captive for all the years I have spent behind lock and key.”

He observed the paralysing effect of the dread that came over James at the mention of Captain Flint and all that he had been. He did so openly, letting James see him undeterred and undaunted by whatever was to come. After perhaps half a minute in which James did not appear to breathe at all, he exhaled heavily and drew in a long, shaking breath to follow it. Thomas offered him all the smile he could muster; it was not very much of one.

“We shall embark on our freedom together, then,” James said gruffly. He cleared his throat once, twice, then looked away.

“So we shall,” Thomas said. “But I think first some sleep is very much called for.”

“Sleep?” said James, looking confounded by the mere idea of it. “You think now is a time for sleep?”

Thomas nodded and began scooping coins into one of the bags. “I do.”

James sat very still and watched Thomas fill first one bag then the other. He still looked mildly incredulous when Thomas glanced up at him afterwards, but Thomas could see that the idea would soon take hold of him, resist it as he might. 

And, of course, resist it he did. “I cannot agree,” he said, perfectly and characteristically uncooperative.

Thomas felt a real smile begin at the edges of his mouth and tried to fight it back. James had never responded well to condescension, whether kindly or otherwise. “Why not?”

“I do not wish it,” James said, aiming for imperious but, by dint of fatigue, landing closer to drunken grandiosity. It took an almighty effort for Thomas to keep his smile from showing on his face. Here was a James he knew very well indeed. “I have not waited all this time and come all this way just to _go to sleep_ the moment I finally have you to myself.”

“We have been alone in this room for over an hour, and you chose to spend the first part of it in a very stern silence,” Thomas pointed out. “You would have done just as well to spend it asleep.”

James glared at him, but there was no heat in it. “I can assure you I will not be sleeping at this time.”

“Only lie down, then,” Thomas suggested, slipping sideways off the bed and putting the two bags together into the rightmost drawer of the mule chest, tucking them under the half-dozen pairs of socks and stockings neatly arrayed there. He turned back to James, unable to hold back his smile any longer and unable to resist sharing the thought that had occurred to him. “I will tell you a story.”

James snorted softly. “Because that’s exactly what the world needs,” he said. “More and more fucking stories.” Despite this, he quite willingly spun around where he sat and then lay back, his hands supporting the back of his head on the pillow and his legs crossed at the ankle. He regarded Thomas with bland anticipation.

So step one in Thomas’s plan to send James to sleep – to arrange him horizontally – had been achieved with rather less effort than he had been anticipating, and now he came up against the obstacle of having to follow through with his promise of a story. 

It should not have been a difficult task. In London, Thomas had dearly loved reading to James and had wanted to share every book he had ever read with him, not by lending them but by experiencing them together in the same moment. Words and their meanings changed every time they were shared with another, and Thomas had wanted to add a layer of James McGraw into every book he ever had read or would ever read in his lifetime. He wanted to find him everywhere: on every page, in every word, in every breath. They had only had the time to scratch the surface of Thomas’s library before they had been taken from each other, and since that day Thomas had been allowed to read the Bible and the Bible only. In this room there were no books at all, and passages which had once lived at the tip of Thomas’s tongue in readiness for recitation were murky, distant, lost. 

He walked back to the bed and sat down level with James’s shoulders, resting his stockinged feet on the floor and casting around in his mind for a story he could tell that would have the desired effect. A story they both already knew, perhaps, something well-trodden and familiar that did not need to be listened to closely. Or something new, something whimsical and fantastic and so far from reality it may as well already be a dream. 

“Sometimes I woke and I felt you there,” James said unprompted, his eyes half-closed. “I woke and your words hung in the air, but I could never remember what it was you had said to me.”

Thomas had the noblest of intentions. He had planned to keep a certain careful distance between them, as much as could be possible when two long-separated lovers shared a bed. They were so newly reacquainted, and there was a volatility to James that Thomas had not seen in him before. Thomas himself felt alternately fragile and indestructible, which spoke ill of his capacity either to prevent or withstand any great or sudden strain on his mind. He did not want to set off any powder kegs, but he had not yet had time to consider and map out all the places they might have been stored, and so he must step with extreme caution wherever he walked.

But there were certain things he just could not control, not when James said such words in such a voice. Thomas slid down to lie next to him, propping himself up on one elbow. He brushed a hand from James’s temple, along his jaw and down his neck, letting it come to rest in the hollow of his throat. James turned his head and then his whole body to face Thomas. Thomas leaned in and touched his forehead to James’s, closed his eyes and told himself that this was not the time. 

“You had a story to tell me,” James murmured. 

Thomas no longer cared a fig about stories. “For every sunrise I saw,” he said, “I remembered once again the first time I saw it rise on you.”

James drew in a long, deep breath and let it out again. It whispered on Thomas’s cheek, tickling his beard. Weariness drew him down, surprising him with its strength and the speed of its onset. James may be impervious to fatigue, or at least believe himself capable of resisting it indefinitely, but Thomas was not, and in lying down beside James he had fallen victim to his own scheme to induce sleep. 

“I will tell you a story,” he said, hearing the exhausted slur of his words and knowing them for a lie as he spoke them, “as soon as I can think of one.”

James laughed, the sound of it barely audible. Even with his eyes closed Thomas knew the exact shape of James’s mouth, the lines in his cheek, the light in his eyes. 

James touched his fingers to Thomas’s cheek and leaned in and kissed him, light and sweet. “Never mind,” he said quietly as he withdrew. “You have convinced me of the merits of sleep.”

Thomas could lie here like this until he grew old and grey. He could lie here like this until his heart faded and stopped. _Andra moi ennepe, mousa_ , he thought, as sleep rose in him and turned his mind sideways.


	7. A Story is True - Day 3

Thomas had drifted to sleep a few hours after nightfall with James still tucked in close to him, his head resting on Thomas’s chest and Thomas’s arm wrapped comfortably around his back. He had resisted it for a little longer than was wise, perhaps, so caught up was he in savouring the peace and the quiet and the perfect impossibility that was James asleep by his side, but in the end it had claimed him, as it always must.

When he dreamed, he did not dream of Captain Flint and Long John Silver and depravity on the high seas. He did not dream of James Flint and John Silver and all the things they might or might not have been. In his dream he was a child again, standing in his father’s study with his chin held high, striving for a proper lordly confidence and poise while his mouth trembled and his heart pounded in his ears. Mr Oglethorpe stood looking at Thomas from behind his father’s desk, informing him that it had been agreed he would be sacrificed to the gods on the night of the next new moon, as his father, his mother and his brothers would soon be taking to the sea to hunt down and kill every person Thomas had ever loved or would ever love. His tone was benign, with a touch of pity: a tone such as one might use to inform a small boy that his trip to the seaside had been cancelled or that his favourite doll had come to an untimely end.

This was a common enough variation on a dream Thomas had had many times before. It was not always Mr Oglethorpe delivering this news; sometimes the earl himself delivered the news, taking no small amount of pleasure in it, and sometimes it was Peter, shuffling his feet and never quite meeting Thomas’s eye. Sometimes Thomas’s brothers watched on, and sometimes they did not. Sometimes Thomas was to be sacrificed to the Greek gods, sometimes to the Roman, and sometimes to the devil himself. Once, memorably, he was to be sent away as tribute to the great Irish giant Conand, whose wickedness had tormented Thomas’s dreams for three months after his governess had first told him the tale.

What jolted him awake this time, deep in the night, was the appearance for the first time of a small figure standing in the open doorway of the study, silent and featureless, who smelled stronger and stronger of blood and salt the closer Thomas tried to peer at him and who only opened his eyes at the precise moment of Thomas’s waking. 

In that moment, above all, Thomas was hot – hot with fear, hot in the late autumn air, hot with James’s body pressed to his from shoulder to foot. There was no smell of blood nor salt, but sweat Thomas could smell, and strongly. It had not been this hot when Thomas had gone to sleep; it certainly should not be this hot now, and it did not take long for Thomas to determine the source of it. A hand across James’s forehead all but burned him, and now that he was properly awake and not still half-caught in his dream, he became aware that James’s breaths were sudden and shallow and that he pulled at Thomas’s shirt over his chest where before his hand had only lain there, heavy and still.

“James,” he said pointlessly, uselessly, feeling the sweat on James’s brow and cursing himself for having been unaware of it for so long. He shifted a little away from James, from the suddenly overwhelming heat of him, and he hoped to God he would soon wake up from this dream as well, that it would soon be morning and James would be taken around the plantation while Thomas went out to work, both hale and hearty and certain of seeing each other again at the end of the day. “Please wake,” he said softly, directing the entreaty to himself just as much as to James. Either would do; anything would be preferable to this quiet, dark moment in which Thomas was both frightened and alone.

“I did not want this,” James said weakly, his voice whisper-quiet in the night. “I did not want it.”

Thomas worked James’s hand free from his shirt and held onto it, sliding down a little on the bed so they could lie face to face. In the absolute darkness of the room he could see nothing of James, but with his free hand he found his cheek and then the curve of his neck, hot and damp with sweat. “Do you hear me?” he asked. “Can you hear what I am saying?”

“I never wanted it. I never wanted it.”

“James,” Thomas said again, gathering his resolve. “I will go and fetch the doctor.”

“The grip,” James murmured, his hand tightening on Thomas’s. “They don’t tell you.”

Thomas blinked back tears as he pried James’s fingers loose and pulled his hand away, leaving James to clutch the empty air. “You are safe here, and you shall be well,” he said. “I will return very soon.”

He had no trouble navigating the room without a light; these cabins were all built to the same plan, and Thomas had been living in them for what felt like half his life. The difficulty was not in passing through the room without incident but in leaving it behind him, knowing he left James disoriented and alone in the dark, with no one to bring him comfort.

He hurried barefoot to the next cabin along, stumbling only a little, with not a star to be seen in the clouded night sky. He knocked hard on the door, and the resulting pain in his knuckles was a welcome distraction from the formless dread in his heart. “Hullo!” he called out. “Hullo! It’s Thomas.”

The door swung open just as Thomas raised his hand to knock again. 

“Please fetch Mr Hawkes,” Thomas said. “Quickly.”

“Hawkes?” Tracy grumbled blearily, his deep voice even deeper with the hoarseness of sleep. “What for?”

“Thomas, I will fucking kill you,” Ned said from somewhere inside the cabin, every word very clearly enunciated. “I was dreaming of Catherine.”

Thomas’s temper rose to match his fear, and he held back from harsh words only with great effort. “James is unwell,” he said evenly. “He needs the doctor, and I need to return to him immediately. Please, one of you go.”

“Oh, James is here,” said Ned, his voice moving now inside the dark cabin. “I forgot. Yeah, I’ll go.”

He shouldered past Tracy in the doorway and clapped Thomas on the shoulder reassuringly as he went by, a flash of white teeth and eyes in the darkness.

“Go on, then,” Tracy said, and closed the door.

Thomas very nearly did so, but then a thought occurred to him and he knocked once again on the door. 

Tracy jerked it open again. “What is it?”

“Do you have any water?”

Thomas did not have to see Tracy’s scowl to know it was there. “It’s a good thing you’ve earned so many favours here, Thomas,” he said, walking back into the room. He came back a moment later with a jug of water half-full, which he held up right in front of Thomas’s face, above his own head, so Thomas could see to take it. “The man that’s getting this hasn’t earned a single one.”

Thomas had been about to thank Tracy for both his time and his water, but at that statement his gratitude evaporated. He took the jug without a word, and Tracy very firmly closed the door again. Thomas would speak with him another time, when the discourse would be civil. Tracy was reasonable and well-mannered when in a good mood and surly as a dog when he was not; in this moment, Thomas was too focused on fighting back his own fear to devote more than half a thought to anything or anyone else.

There had been men who had come to the plantation, taken fever and died within the space of a week, buried up on the hill behind the cabins before they had worked a single day. Those men, unlike James, had all been newcomers to the continent: men transported from England who had first been weakened by the lengthy voyage and then arrived in a place where they had no protection against local malady or disease. The latter was certainly not the case when it came to James. Thomas must not let his mind draw conclusions that were not warranted by the evidence he had before him. He knew that James was ill; he had no reason to believe he was in anything approaching mortal danger. 

When he returned to his cabin, Thomas forced himself to light a candle and set it on the table before going to James with the water. He did not usually see the place lit by candlelight, as candles were rationed and to be used only when strictly required. Though it was much more practical to have light in the room by which Thomas could see, it did not do much to set his nerves at ease. Shadows loomed and flickered; he had rather preferred it when he had been able to see nothing at all.

To be able to see James was to transform the situation from an amorphous nightmare into a grim and undeniable reality. Far from being curled up in distress as Thomas had halfway expected, James lay much as he had been when Thomas had left him: stretched out on his side, his left hand splayed on the bedclothes where Thomas had been lying and the other tucked close into his chest. The left hand jerked every so often – a little motion as though James was tugging on a rein or a rope, or firing a gun. 

Thomas had little experience tending to the sick, his station in life being first far too high and then far too low to be assigned such a task. Nor had he much been ill himself, to remember how he had been tended to and replicate that on James’s behalf. Of fevers he knew a very little. Damp cloths were to be placed on the brow and breast, and water was to be drunk as much and as frequently as possible. He could do as much now, and help would be arriving soon.

There was not a large amount of water remaining in Tracy’s jug; Thomas would need to think carefully about how it would best be used. He filled a cup and then brought both vessels over to the bed, setting the jug on the floor and kneeling by James’s head to consider how best he could proceed from this point. He wanted to have James drink but feared taking any action that his fevered mind might consider threatening. He did not want to disturb James, much less move him bodily, when he did not know what kind of reaction such a thing might elicit. The mere thought of having to restrain James physically or to cause distress to him in any way was anathema to Thomas; he could not and would not do it.

So Thomas set the cup down again and eyed the water that remained in the jug. As there were not any spare blankets or towels or even rags in the cabin and Thomas was not minded to soothe James’s fever with wet and dirty stockings, Thomas took off his own shirt, which he had no need of, bundled it up and wet it through. When he pressed it gently to James’s brow James went still, first in shock but then easing into relief. “It is all right,” Thomas said to him. “I have you.” He dabbed the shirt carefully all around James’s scalp, grateful for the first time that it was so closely shaven and exposed to the air.

When Thomas lifted the shirt away, intending to refresh it with more water and repeat the process across James’s neck and chest, the stillness that had come over James was replaced by a shifting, anxious tension and an indistinct muttering. Thomas re-wet the shirt with shaking hands before quickly climbing onto the bed and taking James’s head into his lap, relieved when James demonstrated no alarm and offered no resistance and even more relieved when the mutterings slowly faded from his lips. He rubbed his dripping shirt from James’s throat down to his chest and spread it out there, lifting James’s shirt with his other hand to allow him to do so more comprehensively. 

The heat of James’s body was such that Thomas’s shirt soon had been considerably dried out and warmed by it; Thomas realised too late that as he had not brought the jug or the cup with him onto the bed, he could neither apply more water to James’s body nor provide it for drinking without greatly disturbing James and jeopardising all that he had achieved so far.

There were two quick knocks on Thomas’s door; it opened before he could draw breath to answer. James’s eyes snapped open, and then he sat up much more abruptly than Thomas would have thought possible, suddenly invigorated where an instant before he had been quiescent under Thomas’s hands. Thomas slid forward quickly behind him and wrapped an arm around his chest, speaking quietly to him, though he had little idea what words were coming out of his mouth either before or after he had said them. James’s heart was beating furiously, and Thomas could feel sharp tension in his neck and shoulders.

“Go back now, Eames,” Mr Hawkes said to somebody behind him. “Yes. Go.”

“Give us the room,” James instructed as Mr Hawkes shut the door behind him and advanced a little way toward the bed. 

“We have the room,” Thomas said in James’s ear. “Be at ease.”

“Wellesbury reported him well not eight hours ago,” the overseer said. “What has happened?”

James leaned back heavily against Thomas, subsiding as quickly and as unexpectedly as he had risen. Thomas would have preferred to stand in order to address Mr Hawkes, but in the circumstances, sitting would have to do. He braced James against him and looked over his shoulder to Mr Hawkes, who stood between them and the candle on the table and whose face was therefore little but shadow.

“I woke not long ago to find him thus,” Thomas said. “He was weary, earlier – weary and unsettled – but I did not think him ill, not like this. He has been sleeping a great deal. I thought he only needed rest.”

“There is a kind of madness that comes over a man when he returns home from war,” Mr Hawkes said, his voice light and calm. “It is to be expected, but its form can rarely be predicted.”

Thomas looked closer at him, trying to discern some expression from the shadows that covered his round, plain face. Of all the men on this plantation, Thomas knew Mr Hawkes the least, and that was by the overseer’s very intentional design. Nobody knew him, and everybody knew there was little sense in trying. Mr Hawkes was scrupulously fair, disinterested in his judgement and utterly uninterested in any man’s personal affairs, wishes or opinions, whoever that man may be. He had had the role of overseer for eight years, and in that time Thomas had learned nothing whatsoever of his family, his origins, his politics or any other thing. He had heard him raise his voice only once, to Solomon Browne when he had fallen asleep at his post, and even then there had been something businesslike and impersonal about the rebuke. Thomas felt calmer in himself at the unexpected show of sympathy from someone who had been, to that point, an entirely unsympathetic man.

“It’s a hell of a war he’s been in,” Mr Hawkes added, and there was no trace of judgement in his voice.

“It is,” Thomas said, thinking of the scars covering James’s body, the rambling way he had spoken the night before and the physical weakness he acknowledged but would not make allowance for. Thomas had been a fool to think such matters could resolve themselves in such little time, with so little consequence. He should have been alert to this danger; he should have taken so much better care from the beginning.

“What are you talking about?” James said vaguely, leaning on Thomas more heavily with every second that passed.

“Mr Oglethorpe is sending for the doctor,” Mr Hawkes said to Thomas. “Wyndham will be bringing a few things shortly. Once he arrives, I will go to make my report, and thus we will determine what is to be done.”

“Could you pass the water, please,” Thomas said, nodding toward where he had left it on the floor. “He has had nothing to drink.”

Mr Hawkes walked over, his steps measured and quiet. He handed the cup to Thomas and stepped back with the jug in his hands, waiting until it was needed again. Thomas held the cup to James’s lips and urged him to drink, quite overcome with relief when James did so calmly and without difficulty. Mr Hawkes came forward again to refill the cup, and again James drank as he was bid. Thomas set the empty cup down on the bed.

“Get as much into him as you can, while he’s taking it,” Mr Hawkes said, coming forward again with the jug. “There is no guarantee he will remain this cooperative, nor as willingly upright.” 

There were not quite two cupfuls of water remaining, and James drank them both. Mr Hawkes brought a stool over by the bed and set the empty cup and jug down on it while Thomas eased out from behind James and lowered him back down onto the bed so he could properly rest once more. James mumbled again as he lay there, his eyes open but unseeing, a little agitated by the movement but not nearly as much as he had been in the very beginning.

“I’ll wait outside,” Mr Hawkes said. “You call out if you need to, Thomas.” He left the cabin without waiting for a reply, and Thomas sat for a moment nearly overwhelmed by the respite he had received from such an utterly unexpected quarter. Thomas desperately needed both assistance and reassurance; Mr Hawkes had very calmly and competently provided what was needed in both respects, and now he granted Thomas the privacy he needed in order to comfort James as best he might until more help arrived. 

Thomas had only seen James ill once before, though James had never conceded that he had been so. He had been weary and short-tempered for a few days, his voice hoarse and his nose stuffy, and then finally he had dozed off reading reports in Thomas’s study, leaving Thomas to watch him and listen to his snuffling breaths in fond agony, this man he had barely known long enough to call a friend, let alone entertain thoughts of anything of a higher order. When Miranda had knocked on the door and James had woken with a start, Thomas had waited a few seconds before looking up from his papers and calling her in, pretending not to notice James’s disorientation and befuddlement. It had been months later, when James was suffering a slight cough and disdaining even the mildest sympathy from Thomas, that Thomas had shared his observations of that day with James, who had steadfastly denied that any such event had ever taken place, declaring it an unfounded accusation with absolutely no independent evidence to sustain it.

Thomas had derived great enjoyment from both those episodes. He derived none whatsoever from this one. 

When Wyndham came with water and a small pile of folded towels, he delivered both to Thomas directly and without ceremony, stiffly professional and plainly unhappy with his task. “Do you need me to stay?” he asked when Thomas thanked him, his voice clipped and very nearly hostile. 

“No,” said Thomas.

“Good,” Wyndham said, and left. 

This water was cool, and though Thomas was still not entirely certain what was best, he soaked one towel and laid it over James’s brow, set another under the back of his neck and another across his chest from shoulder to shoulder. James lay barely moving, hot and uncomfortable, shifting restlessly under Thomas’s ministrations but making no proper effort to resist or escape them. 

The candle on the table had burned low and Thomas was nearly out of water when the cabin door opened again and Ned Eames sidled in, his size and somewhat ungainly movement identifying him in an instant. He closed the door quietly behind him and brought the second stool over to sit by the bed, all without saying a word and taking great care not to disrupt the stillness of the room. James had by now sunk into something resembling proper sleep, and he did not stir at any of it.

Thomas was confounded by Ned’s solicitous conduct as much as by his entirely unexpected visit, and it took him a little while to realise that Ned was waiting for him to speak first. “I’m sorry that I woke you from your dream,” he said once he had adjusted to Ned’s uncharacteristically quiet presence. He did not know why it occurred to him to say such a thing and not, for example, ask why Ned had come, protest his coming or warn him that at any time Wyndham, Mr Hawkes, the doctor or even Mr Oglethorpe might come and Ned would find himself in a great deal of trouble for being in a cabin that was not his own.

Then again, trouble was not usually of much concern to Ned. He courted it, laughed at it and treated it with as little respect as he treated everything in this place.

But he was not laughing now.

“I will never see her again,” he said huskily, looking at James’s head in Thomas’s lap, at Thomas’s fingers on the towel draped over his forehead. He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “To see you with him, well, I’d say that’s as close as I’m ever going to get to it.”

The story of Ned Eames and the mysterious Catherine was one of the most notorious in the whole plantation. Ned took it as a point of pride that he had been exiled for having cuckolded a lord, and he boasted frequently of both his prowess and his charm. He spoke of her second child being his, of her calling him Edward and claiming the name was for her husband’s grandfather. Thomas had always thought it in considerably poor taste that Ned spoke so loudly of a lady’s private business and doubted that even half of the things Ned said were the truth, but much as Thomas favoured honesty in his own dealings, men in this place needed to be allowed their lies. He had seen countless men come to this plantation and struggle to reconcile their past with their present, bringing sorrow and distress to not only themselves but all those around them. Sometimes this struggle necessitated the construction of a narrative, neither entirely true nor entirely false, that characterised all of their life’s experiences as having led them unavoidably here; there was no pain or injustice in such a fate, after all, if there was nothing that could have been done to avoid it. Thomas did not lie to himself in this way, knowing full well that his tragedy had been avoidable, but he did not condemn the ones who did.

For all the understanding and forgiveness in his heart, Thomas still did not speak to Ned as he did to other men here; he did not speak to him often, and very rarely from the heart. Ned made fun as an entrenched habit, and there was a hard edge to that mockery that Thomas did not care for. Ned knew full well that the spectre of adultery had been used to tear Thomas from his life and send him here, yet he did not hesitate to speak of it loud and often – louder and oftener, Thomas fancied, when he knew Thomas was within earshot, and with sly looks in his direction that Thomas quite studiously ignored. He did not know what Ned sought to gain by his constant needling, whether for Thomas to admit to some sort of kinship with him or to finally lose patience and condemn him outright, but Ned did not tire of it, and so Thomas had learned to endure it without giving him the satisfaction of a response. 

But Ned still dreamed of his Catherine, it seemed, years after he had parted from her, and his voice, usually light and modulated with irony, was earnest now, and quiet. “How does it feel?” he asked Thomas. “What did it feel like to see him here?”

Had it only been two days ago that James had arrived on the plantation? Thomas felt like years had passed since he had turned and seen James standing before him. “Indescribable,” he said, allowing himself to go back there for just a moment. “Truly indescribable. Like standing in the very centre of the sun.”

Ned sighed so deeply that Thomas was surprised he did not feel the air blowing across his face from four feet away. “She always used to say to me that he would kill her if he found out,” Ned said, “but she came to me time and time again. Her sister found out about us and told me he would kill _me._ I had half a mind to challenge him to a duel or some such, so if he were to kill me, at least Catherine would not be caught up in it. If I killed him, then he would be gone forever and everything could change. I asked her what she thought of the idea, and she said don’t be stupid, he would unquestionably kill me, and did I think she wanted to see me dead? So we carried on, the same as ever. Neither of us knew how to stop.”

“I understand the feeling,” said Thomas.

Ned was quiet for the barest of seconds then said, as softly as Thomas had ever heard him speak, “You could have been killed for it, too.”

Thomas’s chest contracted, and his throat was too tight for him to speak. 

“He was in the _Navy_.”

Thomas nodded. James mumbled something unintelligible; Thomas rearranged the towel on his head so it would rest a little fresher against his skin. 

“Your wife must have been an extraordinary woman,” Ned went on, “to let everyone think it was the two of them who were carrying on the affair.”

Miranda had cared little for her reputation when alive and had told Thomas, on their wedding night no less, how much less she would care about it when she was dead, but Thomas still hesitated to speak of her to Ned. He had spoken of these matters to others, of course – to William Cunynghame, to George Crutchley and to Anthony Pinfield – but Thomas truly did not like Ned and did not trust that this solidarity they felt in the moment would last long beyond it. If they could come to some understanding now, though, some true kinship that would put an end to the difficulties between them, then it would be an effort worth making. No bond could exist between them if Thomas stood in the way of it, and so, knowing Miranda would give him her blessing, he replied honestly. “They were,” he said. “For a while, they were.”

“They were?” Ned said so loudly that Thomas startled and James shifted a little, frowning. Thomas rubbed the towel over his chest and then left his hand lying there, the contact soothing him as much as it did James. Ned waited until they were still again and then spoke much more quietly, but still in the same incredulous tone. “You fell in love with a man who was fucking your wife? Jesus, Thomas.”

“There were no secrets between us,” Thomas said to him. “Nobody lied to anybody. Nobody was hurt.”

“They were right, back in London. You are completely mad.”

Thomas felt anger run through him hot and powerful, and he wanted to bite back. But he had James to think of, and even if he had not, there was no benefit in letting Ned see how susceptible he could be to such comments even so many years after he had left Bethlem, never to return there. He settled for not responding at all and letting Ned reflect in silence on his words, if he was willing to or even capable of engaging in such reflection.

“They envy us, you know,” Ned said a few moments later, apparently having been reflecting on something else entirely. “They envy us for knowing what we want and being unafraid to take it at any cost.”

“No,” said Thomas. “It is not a matter of ‘us’.”

“If I loved a man I would have done the exact same thing.”

Thomas could well believe it, but the fact remained that Ned did not love a man but a woman who was forbidden to him, and those things really could not be compared. “You would not have been envied for it.”

“Well, I envy you now. I envy him, having been able to come and find you.” He sighed again, gusty and unrestrained. “I miss her, Thomas. She is living her whole life without me.” When Thomas did not immediately respond, Ned spoke again to prompt him. “You know what that’s like, of course.”

“Yes,” said Thomas.

“How did you bear it for so long?”

“Not well.”

“But you always seem so calm,” Ned protested, his voice rising gradually toward its normal volume as he forgot to moderate it. “You seem happy here. Or maybe not happy, but you seem kind of settled, you know. It seems like you’ve worked everything out.”

“When you arrived, I had already been here for six or seven years,” said Thomas. “These things take time.”

“And he came back for you after so long,” Ned said, wonder in his voice. He leaned over a little as if to get a better view of James, though the light was so low he surely could not see much more than his beard and the wet towel draped across his brow. He sat back again, still looking. “Is it better to think of them or not think of them, do you think?”

“I do not know what is better,” said Thomas. “But not a day passed here where James and Miranda did not cross my thoughts. I have never tried to forget them, for all that I have had to move on alone.”

“Sometimes for me it’s been a few days, and something will remind me of her, and I wish I could just remove it all completely from my mind, the whole damn romance and the whole damn tragedy, but she just stays and stays and stays. No matter what I say or don’t say, do or don’t do, think or don’t think, she haunts me. And now your James has come here, and there is this stupid hope that has come alive within me, even though Catherine will never, ever come here, even if he dies or if she leaves him, because she does not even know where here is. Even if she did, who would ever let a woman, a mother, come into this place? What mother would bring children here? I am a fool to think of it, and I am a fool to hope for it, but I want her, Thomas. I want her still.”

“I am so very sorry, Ned,” said Thomas.

“My best hope is for this place to be overrun by Indians and for me to somehow escape alive and stow away back to England,” Ned said bitterly. “I’ll walk right back into her home, a triumphant goddamn return after five years’ exile, and her husband will shoot me dead on sight. She won’t be allowed to come to my funeral. I likely won’t even get a funeral. God, I fucking hate it here.”

James began to stir again on the bed, but he subsided when Thomas began to stroke the back of his fingers down James’s beard and rubbed his chest again.

“At least for you there are other men here,” Ned said sullenly, eliminating all but a trace of the sympathy he had garnered from Thomas. “What have I got?”

“That does not help,” Thomas said, conscious that he must remain gentle with James and so keeping his voice low and flat where he wished to crack it like a whip. “It does not help in the slightest.”

“Sorry,” said Ned, not sounding particularly so. “I know you don’t like me very much. In fact, I don’t think you like me at all, and fair enough. I say it makes no difference if anybody likes or does not like anybody, because we’re all stuck here until we die and there’s nothing to be gained by any of it. But I know you’re a good man, better than me, and I can’t imagine what I would feel if I got to see Catherine again, even just once for a single second, and you’ve been apart from him so much longer. I just thought, you know, maybe I’m one of the only ones here who has the same ... the same – you know, Thomas. You’re good with words.”

“I understand the sentiment,” said Thomas. “I truly appreciate your coming here.”

“Come on, at least tell me what the word is that I’ve got on the tip of my tongue,” said Ned. “At least give me that. I can’t have anything else I want.”

“You are one of the only ones here who can truly empathise with me at this time,” Thomas said obligingly. “You are one of the few with whom I could have a genuine rapport in this moment.”

“There you go,” said Ned. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say.”

“Thank you, Ned.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he said, the familiar irony seeping back into his tone. “I’m going to be sick with envy about this for the rest of our lives, and I don’t see myself handling it particularly well. I’m going to have to see you every day with him. I’ll see him every morning and every night. As long as you’re happy and I’m not, I’ll be bitter about it. That’s just how things will have to be.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah, you always understand,” Ned muttered, getting to his feet. “Don’t get up, hah. I’ll see myself out. Just tell him, when he’s recovered and before I meet him properly, that I don’t hate him because of _him_ , for any Captain Flint stuff or anything. I just hate that he lives right next door to me now, representing everything I desperately want and can never have, and I absolutely cannot stand the romance of it all. It’s nothing personal that I’m going to hate him. I just am. Tell him I’d fuck England too, if I could. I wish he’d gone ahead and done it.”

“I will tell him,” said Thomas. 

“Do you want me to light another candle?” Ned asked as he returned his stool to the table.

James was still too warm to the touch, but he was settled, and Thomas thought it likely he would continue to rest soundly enough if left undisturbed. Thomas was more than ready to join him in that rest; even if he was not put to work tomorrow and allowed instead to tend to James, the day would be a long and difficult one. 

“Thomas,” said Ned. “Do you want me to light another candle before I go?”

“Thank you,” said Thomas. “No.” 

“I’ll see you later, then,” said Ned. “I hope he is well again soon. I am happy for you, though I’ll never say as much to you again.”

“Thank you, Ned.”

Ned stood a moment poised to speak but then simply blew out the candle, wished Thomas a good night and let himself out.

“Who’s that?” James said, stirring at the sound of the door closing.

“That was Ned Eames,” Thomas said, indulging himself in a belief that James was both conscious and in his right mind, asking a question based on reality and not the fever dream running through his head. “He lives next door. He has helped us tonight.”

“I should be going,” James said in reply, trying to roll over but being significantly hampered by the obstacle that was Thomas’s knee. “We cannot keep –”

“Absolutely not,” said Thomas, holding him in place with very little effort. “You will be staying the night with me.”

“Mmhmm,” he said, falling still again.

Thomas felt a vast yawn building up inside him; he turned his face as far away from James as possible when it demanded to be released. He must sleep, and soon, but the thought of it made him queasy. He had been asleep when James’s fever had risen, and he had not known of it until his own dream had woken him. What was to say James’s condition would not deteriorate again, just as quickly and as quietly as it had before, and Thomas would sleep on none the wiser? The thought of it was too awful to contemplate. 

But Thomas could not stay awake indefinitely to watch over James, and the longer he waited, the longer and deeper his sleep would be when it came. So he lifted James’s head and shoulders enough to move out from underneath them then placed his head onto the pillow as gently as he would a newborn babe. He stretched out beside James, every part of that movement slow and infinitely careful. 

“I may well fall asleep very soon,” he said. “For God’s sake, if you are in distress, give an indication of it. Do not think for one second I will tolerate your suffering in silence.”

There was no response, but Thomas had not expected any. James was calm and still in sleep and marginally cooler to the touch, Thomas fancied, than he had been; the more deeply he was asleep, the better. He had passed the worst of it, perhaps, and now had only to rest and recover his strength. 

Thomas did not allow himself to speculate on that point; lying awake and wondering would bring him no closer to finding out what the next day would bring. What was most important was that he was equipped to face it when it came. He closed his eyes and did his utmost not to worry about the things he could not control.


	8. A Story is Untrue - Day 3

Thomas was brought to wakefulness by the increasing noise underneath him: men talking and yelling, the clattering of crockery and the groaning of wooden furniture against wooden floors. They had neglected to draw the curtains before sleep the previous day, and the metal handles on the drawers of the mule chest glistened in the direct light of the sun. The prisoner cabins at the plantation had only two small windows facing generally northerly and never received this much direct sunlight of a morning. Thomas lay and looked at the sunbeams for a time, remembering morning light that had shone through a very different window into a very different room halfway around the world and half a lifetime ago.

But it shone on the same man now as it had then; he slept soundly beside Thomas despite the light in the room and the clamour rising from beneath them. That noise, which was beginning to roar in Thomas’s ears now that he had become consciously aware of it, would be nothing to a man who lived his life at sea, and perhaps especially one who sailed on a pirate ship. It would be nothing to a man who had commanded a force for war, perhaps especially when that force was comprised of pirates and slaves. So too the myriad smells of the establishment they found themselves in, so powerful and confronting to Thomas, likely escaped his notice entirely. 

The sun shone on the same man, and there was no escaping the changes it illuminated. James’s face was still and expressionless in sleep; he looked worn out and far, far older than Thomas knew him to be. Thomas wished he had changed out of his dark clothing that smelled of gunpowder, blood and salt before lying down on the bed. He wished he had not cut off all his hair or developed such deep, dark shadows under his eyes. He wished he would wake this very moment, see Thomas’s eyes upon him and smile, and they could move onward together from there, but James slept on, and Thomas would not wake him. James could sleep for a full week without waking once, and Thomas suspected it would not be nearly enough to do away with the fatigue that burdened him. 

When Thomas turned his mind to what he might do, a large part of him insisted that he should be out in the fields, working his way down the rows in the fresh clear air and late autumn sun. A large part of him was still waiting for a bell to ring, for brisk orders and curt instructions and a collective grumbling as they were carried out. A large part of him was still expecting to be hurried along to breakfast if he tarried too long in bed.

The thought of breakfast made his stomach grumble; that and that alone motivated him to climb as smoothly as he could out of bed and walk over to the chest, his feet complaining with every step he took on the hard floor. To avoid the necessity for communal meals, at least for the time being, they had bought provisions the day before; Mr Gunn had arranged for the purchase of biscuits, meat, cheese and brandy and made no argument when Thomas raised the prospect of fruit and vegetables, adding a dozen apples and two bags of beans to their haul. 

The sailors’ rations, practical and necessary though they were, were visceral reminders of Thomas’s time on the _Margaret_ , which was a time that Thomas would prefer to leave as far distant from his memory as it was from him in time. But he was not willing to enter the maelstrom downstairs in order to get a hot – or at least warm – breakfast, so he knelt down and retrieved a small selection of their provisions from the left-hand drawer: ships biscuits, salted pork and three green apples. He forced down the biscuits and pork and then went to sit on a chair facing the bed, placing two apples on the chair next to him and holding the third in his hand for a moment, unable to remember how many years ago it had been that he last ate an apple. Finally, luxuriantly, he took a bite. 

He was down to the core of the second apple when James came awake. Though Thomas had been watching him sleep and saw the instant he had woken, the immediacy with which James swung to his feet and began to cross the floor still took him by surprise, so fleeting was the interlude between gaining consciousness and such swift and decisive motion.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his mouth still half-full.

James stopped in place, turning to take in Thomas and his apple core in one long look. His expression moved swiftly from irritated to astounded to elated and then abashed. Thomas chewed, chewed, chewed and swallowed.

“Come and have breakfast,” Thomas invited him, as it seemed his question would not be receiving any response. James looked at him a moment longer, his face passing through half a dozen more fleeting emotions before settling on sheepish as he walked over to Thomas, picked the apple up off the chair and sat down on it.

“I cannot shake the feeling that I have been too long away from my men,” James said, rotating the apple slowly in his hand. “When I tell myself that I no longer have any men, the thought is incomprehensible to me. I cannot conceive of it.”

“A great deal has changed in a matter of days,” Thomas said. “I cannot conceive of it either.”

James’s eyes lingered on Thomas for a long while; Thomas did not quite know how to characterise the silence they found themselves in. He finished his apple and then occupied himself by staring pointedly at the one that James still held in his hand and did not eat.

“I do intend to change,” James said. “I do not ask you to partner with a pirate.”

“But?”

James frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown and not one of anger. “But the war I dedicated my entire being to is not as easily wiped from my mind as it was from the world.”

“Your entire being?” Thomas said, thinking how very much that could be when it came to James. “It was so consuming a thing?”

“By the end,” said James, finally taking a bite of his apple. “Yes.”

Thomas was not surprised by the answer – James had said as much before, if not quite so directly – but he was disheartened by it all the same. “What of before the end, then?” he asked. “Before it had so consumed you. Tell me something that brought you joy.”

James stopped chewing, his lips pressed tight together. “Ha,” he said out of one corner of his mouth.

Thomas waited to see if there would be any more answer than that, taking care to appear no more than inquisitive – persistent but not overbearing. He watched James finish his apple, his expression growing darker as his eyes flickered back over his past. 

Thomas reconsidered the wisdom of his question and tried not to display too openly his despair that James could find no answer to it. “Then I will tell you something of my own,” he said, before memories pushed James further into misery than Thomas was willing to watch him sink.

“A story,” James said with an ironic tilt to his eyebrow.

“Not a story,” said Thomas. “Only a moment. No beginnings, no endings, no twists or turns and no lesson to be learned. Just a moment in time.”

“All right,” said James, relaxing suddenly and lounging in his chair, every trace of distress and discomfort banished in an instant. It was an extraordinary transformation and not the first of its kind Thomas had seen. Anger and distress had always risen in James slowly, like steps up a ladder, increasing moment by moment until he reached breaking point, but on those occasions he subsided, he did so all at once. Sometimes this was to quiet sorrow, sometimes to gentle warmth and sometimes to a careful and considered neutrality. Thomas had forgotten how mesmerising it was to witness such a thing.

Then he realised that James was watching him watching, a smile forming on the far side of his face that turned Thomas’s heart over in his chest. 

“In this moment,” James said, his teeth now showing in his smile, “I am beginning to remember joy.”

Thomas’s body urged him to close the gap between them, to seal that sentiment by spending the entire morning rediscovering joy. His better judgement held firm and prevented him from meeting anything other than James’s gaze with his own. There were precious things at risk here, and Thomas would not imperil them by acting any more rashly than he already had. He would be careful, and he would stay his course.

“I had been on the plantation for three years,” he said.

“Sounds like a beginning,” James said immediately, pompously critical but with laughter in his eyes.

Thomas pressed his lips together in a vain attempt to keep from smiling. “Every moment has its context,” he said once it was plain that he had failed. “There is no understanding an experience without understanding the person who has experienced it. No one else in the world can share with you what I am about to share with you, because no one experienced it as I did. So to understand it, you must know who I was at that moment in time.”

“All right,” James said easily. “You had been on the plantation for three years. Do continue.”

“At that time I shared lodgings with a man by the name of Josiah Willoughby. We lived together in silence, as in all my time there I never heard him speak. I do not know whether it was a lifelong silence or a result of some experience suffered by him, but as long as I knew him, he never spoke a word. On the plantation every man had a story to tell, true or otherwise, about who he was and why he had come there. Every man but Josiah.”

“Thomas,” said James. “This is a story.”

“It is not,” Thomas insisted. “Hush.”

James laughed then, a deep chuckle that took Thomas’s mind out of his recitation and had him regarding James with pleased surprise. For one perfect moment they shared the same smile, but then James’s faltered and slid off his face, his eyes never leaving Thomas’s but slowly losing the warmth which they had held.

“Sorry,” he said, without explaining what on earth he was apologising for. “Go on.”

“So on this day I had known Josiah for three years, more or less,” Thomas said after a moment. He would speak to James later about the utter absurdity of apologising for laughing, of all things. “He had been on his own before I came. He made no complaint when I was put in with him; I do not believe my presence affected him in any meaningful way. He treated me with neither warmth nor derision. Most of the time he conducted himself as though I were not there at all. He was a man seemingly locked inside himself, who lived and worked, ate and slept, impervious to the world. I thought perhaps through living with him I would become like him, that life on the plantation would erode everything I had been and I would live my life as a husk, an automaton who moved from task to task with nothing to occupy the mind but menial tasks and simple instructions to be followed. I wondered if that would not be preferable, in fact, to living with my own thoughts, which I could not rid myself of and I felt I could not share with anybody.”

James watched him, intent. Focused like this, solemn and unselfconscious, he was as beautiful as anything Thomas had ever seen. The sight of him was everything Thomas needed in this world, and he had gone so very long without it.

Once he had remembered how to speak, he continued. “It had been three years,” he said. “I still could not sleep in the summers, and more than half the year, it seemed, was summer. But this night was cooler, and I could breathe the air, and so I could sleep. I awoke in the dead of night to Josiah kneeling by my bed, jostling me as he had never done before. He pulled me up without a word and walked to the door, and I followed him, half-convinced I was in a dream. Once we were outside, he sat down on the ground three steps from the door and looked up into the sky, seeming to forget that I was there at all.” 

Thomas remembered the confusion and uncertainty of that moment. He remembered Josiah’s shadowy form in the starlight, and he remembered the still air and the sleep he had been rubbing from his eyes when he saw the first meteor flash across the sky and understood why Josiah had woken him.

“It was a meteor shower,” Thomas said. “He had taken time away from it to wake me, distant as I had thought we were in acquaintance. I sat and watched it together with him, and in that moment I knew love again.”

He looked at James then, whose small frown did not tell Thomas much of what he thought but who sat leaning forward in his chair now, so attentive to Thomas’s words it was near intoxicating.

“Nothing in his behaviour changed afterwards,” Thomas said, compelled suddenly to continue talking, to look away from James lest he lose himself in what he felt growing between them, “but there was –”

“Now you have made it a story,” James declared, sitting back again, and so easily the tension that had built was diminished – diminished, but not entirely dissipated. “You seek to conclude it formally with the lesson that is to be learned.”

Thomas smiled. “Perhaps.”

James accepted that with good grace and only a gentle rolling of the eyes, and so Thomas spared him the exegesis.

“Did you have no such moments where you could find peace?” he asked instead.

James shook his head, though it was unclear to Thomas whether it signalled a negative response to his question or a rejection of it altogether. 

Thomas considered that it might be a good note on which to leave discussion of the past, in any event. It could not all be grief and woe, and it could not always end with Thomas pressing James for more information than he was prepared to divulge. Thomas had not been an overly patient man when he had known James before, but a lot had changed since those times. “Mr Morgan said we have this room for a week,” he said. “Do you wish to stay here so long?”

“I certainly do not wish to,” James said. “But we should be sure of where we are going before we leave. Oglethorpe will not come after us, Silver’s men are gone and will not return, and this place is as good as any to develop a plan, though perhaps not quite so finely furnished as our last.”

“Quite remarkable, the things we take for granted,” said Thomas, wondering when the last time had been that he sat on a cushioned chair, “and the things to which we later become accustomed.”

“The beard suits you,” James said with a muted grin. “I will gladly become accustomed to that.”

Thomas thought of all the changes he had observed on James, the lighthearted comments he could make and the earnest ones, and he felt heat rise in his chest. This day could go down so many different paths, and here was another fork in the road.

“Your lack of reciprocation is noted,” James said before Thomas could come to any kind of decision. “You’ll be pleased, then, to hear me say that mine will have to go, I should think, if I am to venture out into the wide world without being recognised.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t suppose you still have any of your old wigs?”

Thomas was speechless for a good five seconds as his mind, despite his best efforts, conjured up the image. James watched him with laughter in his eyes and a smirk twitching on his lips.

“You still think very highly of your own wit,” Thomas said once he had largely recovered. “That is a great pity.”

“I am right to think highly of it,” James insisted. “So I have been informed.”

“Have you? By whom?”

James grinned. “Your eyes tell on you.”

There was nothing Thomas could say to contradict that, and so he did not try. “If you are concerned about being recognised, perhaps you could change your clothes,” he suggested. “They say a great deal more about you than your beard does.”

James looked down at himself and ran an idle hand down the fabric of his shirt. “So you do like the beard, then,” he said, seemingly as much to amuse himself as to provoke an answer from Thomas.

“I could become accustomed to it,” Thomas said quite honestly.

James let out a little breath of laughter. “What did you get, then, you and Gunn, by way of clothing? I can only hope you didn’t take his sartorial advice.”

“He offered me none,” said Thomas. “His role was purely a financial one.”

“He paid for it?” James said, his voice sharp, and Thomas remembered how aggravated he had been by the money gifted to them.

“He negotiated a price,” Thomas said. “The final sum came out of what Mr Oglethorpe gave to me.”

James’s frown only deepened. “Which had come from them in the first place, as payment to Oglethorpe.”

“Throw it all into the sea if you like,” said Thomas. “But I did not think, in our position, we could afford to be prideful about such things.”

“It is not pride,” James insisted. 

“Then what is it?”

James sat disgruntled for a moment. “It is pride.”

“Come and see what has cost your pride so dearly, then,” said Thomas, rising from his seat, moving over to the chest and lifting its lid. “We will see if you can bear it.” He lifted out all the clothes and dumped them on the bed, all sturdy cloth in various unremarkable shades of brown and white. 

James winced. “You took nobody’s sartorial advice, then,” he said, “least of all your own.”

“Pride again,” Thomas observed.

James looked at the pile of clothing with open reluctance. Worn and soiled as James’s apparel was, the quality and make of the fabric could not be denied. When it had been clean and new, it would have been stunningly fine. Captain Flint, after all, had been a powerful and wealthy man with access to goods, legal or otherwise, from all around the world. Having been James McGraw as well, he would have known how to wear that status to best effect. To see him in the fullness of his power would no doubt have been quite the sight. 

To relinquish that and adopt a plainer costume would bring James no joy, but Thomas knew that he would not refuse to do it. He resisted only in order to maintain a little of his dignity. “You will feel better, surely, in clean clothes,” Thomas urged helpfully.

James picked up a shirt and eyed it with a sort of resigned distaste.

“You will certainly smell better.”

Now it was Thomas’s turn to smile in the face of a highly unappreciative stare, and, God, the gleethat he felt at it, the rising hope that all would be well, the relief at still being able to find those old patterns, to connect in the same way they had so many years ago. It was a wonder that Thomas could keep his smile from splitting his face in two.

James’s resistance was at its end. He put the shirt back down on the bed and struggled out of the one he was wearing, his left shoulder’s movement plainly limited in a way that Thomas had not previously been aware of. He had decided not to stare, was determined that he wouldn’t, but there was nothing lascivious about the way his eyes immediately fixed on the long twin scars across James’s chest, the round bullet wounds in his shoulder and side and no end of other wounds plainly visible to the eye, minor and long healed but so many in number that Thomas felt ill at the sight of them. James was heavier around the middle than he had been, but above that and underneath the multitude of scars, Thomas clearly saw the outline of ribs all up his side.

James saw the look on Thomas’s face, understood it and immediately sought to mischaracterise it, vulnerable and defensive. “You are a devious man,” he said, attempting the same teasing tone as before but at the same time hurrying to get his arms into the new shirt and force it over his head, clenching his jaw against the pain it caused him. “If you wished to look, you needed only to ask.”

Thomas did not accept the attempt at a joke and would not stand by and do nothing while James was in pain. He stepped forward and guided the shirt over James’s head, pulling it down at the back once his head was through. “Not so,” he said firmly. “No ulterior motive exists. What injury is this?”

James shrugged his shoulders to see how the shirt sat on him, pulling it forward a little and then settling it back. Thomas suspected that was also bravado, a display for Thomas’s benefit that both joints still functioned and did not bother him, patently untrue as that was. “It does feel different,” he observed quietly. “I feel ill-suited to it.”

The shirt itself was a little large, having been bought for Thomas’s size, but not so much as to become problematic or attract notice. “Your arm,” Thomas pressed.

“An aggravation of an old injury. It will settle.”

“You were shot in that shoulder,” Thomas said, placing one finger very lightly where he had seen the scar, invisible now under the shirt but imprinted all too vividly on Thomas’s mind.

“Quite,” James replied. "So you see why it is far easier for a pirate simply to never change his clothes.”

There were so many things Thomas’s hands wanted to do at this time, not least of which was holding James to him wholly and completely and until the end of time itself. But there were also little things, tiny things, innumerable temptations and impulses that plagued him. He wanted to touch James’s hair, his little earring, the underside of his chin. He wanted to take him by the hand and kiss him slowly, to hold him by the back of the neck and kiss him properly, to take that shirt off again, all the way off, and remember the touch of his skin. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the muscles of James’s back, his shoulders and his chest; he wanted to feel them straining under his hands. He wanted to see those scars again and come to know them, to accept them and never be shocked by them again. He wanted to lay his hand over James’s heart when it was racing and then again, for longer, once it had slowed.

James reached out and took Thomas’s left hand in his right, letting their joined hands hang easily down between them. He put his other hand up over Thomas’s collarbone and slid it up to his neck, laying his thumb along the bottom of Thomas’s jaw. Thomas felt so young again, desire warring with uncertainty in a way it had not since he was a very young man.

“What are you thinking?” James asked, but he did not ask it as a young man may ask such a question at such a moment. He asked it calmly and conversationally, in expectation of a considered and honest answer. Thomas felt his blood pounding where James’s fingers rested on his neck.

“Here we have complete freedom to act as we wish, more so than ever before,” said Thomas. “And so I wonder at myself, that my thoughts urge caution and circumspection upon me.”

“Caution and circumspection,” James repeated, a teasing little smile on his lips. “Extraordinary.”

Had Thomas ever been able to resist one of James’s smiles? He could not recall any such occasion and highly doubted there had ever been one. He squeezed James’s hand, cupped his jaw with the other and leaned in to kiss him. A kind of calmness welled up inside him and spread through his body from top to toe.

It was a soft kiss, and slow, soon followed by another, and another after that. There was as much pleasure in the parting of their lips and the weighted pauses that followed than there was in the joining of them. Two days ago, Thomas had thought he might number their kisses until the time came that he eventually lost count; he lost count here, now and immediately.

Every inch of Thomas hummed, but he kept his grip firm on James’s hand, a reminder and a necessary brake on what would transpire if he allowed nature to take its course. Caution, he had named it, but he had not yet put his mind to identifying the precise danger that recklessness could invite.

“You are thinking again,” James mumbled into his lips.

“Are you not?” Thomas replied, leaning his forehead into James’s so that he could speak with less temptation to do other things.

“Not in the least.”

James’s words had been a reprimand, then, and not an invitation to conversation. It was a new and strange thing for Thomas to be the one accused of thinking at inappropriate moments. He was accustomed to playing the role of tempter and had little experience on the other side of the equation, of being urged to let go of any restraint and simply act as his body ached to. James had always been the one disinclined to be ruled by his passions, clinging to reason and considered thought even when his blood was at its highest. He had never once fallen impulsively into Thomas’s bed; he had consciously chosen it each and every time.

This was another sign, then, that the ground was not yet firm beneath their feet. If James was not carefully considering his actions, then it must fall to Thomas to do so, and Thomas knew, though he wished he did not, that to rekindle this part of their relationship when so much remained unsaid between them was to court the very worst kind of disaster. When he had taken James into his bed in London, it had been the culmination of a great many things. For all that it was new, for all the care they had taken in navigating it, they had known exactly what it was they were doing together. Twelve years had passed and barely yet been spoken of, and Thomas would not embark on such a momentous thing so ill-prepared as this.

“So the tables turn,” he said, nuzzling his nose against James’s and caressing his fingers, gently de-escalating a situation which had scarcely begun to escalate.

James pulled his head away from Thomas’s just enough to properly look into his eyes. There was so much desire in him, so much burning hunger, that Thomas nearly – _nearly_ – lost his head, abandoned his grip on James’s hand and surrendered to the moment. The bed was so very close and it had been so very long.

His right hand shook as he lifted it to run along the side of James’s head, where before he had been able to run his fingers through long, soft hair. Now it prickled, and the gesture came to an end far earlier than it had used to. There was nothing here to curl around his fingers, to tug on gently, to hold out at length and admire in the light of the sun.

“Are you all right?” James asked, his voice soft and cautious.

“It is difficult to tell.”

James regarded him with eyes suddenly keenly evaluative. He stepped back from Thomas, watching him closely, the separation measured and painstakingly slow. He squeezed Thomas’s fingers then let go of his hand, turning to look inside the chest again. Thomas stood in baffled silence and watched James look through first the main compartment then the drawers below, at a loss to follow his complete change in demeanour.

“There are no boots,” said James. “No hats.” He took out a pair of stockings and one of their two bags of coins. He tested the weight of the bag in his hand and stood up, closing the drawer with his bare foot. “No tools, no weapons.”

“We are not leaving today,” said Thomas, put out by the entirely unveiled criticism. “And it was better not to arouse suspicion, considering the general appearance of Mr Gunn, by purchasing any kind of weaponry.”

“Hats are not overly suspicious items of clothing,” James pointed out.

“Nor was I at my sartorial best at the time,” Thomas said acidly. “I would not want you to feel obliged to wear an unsightly hat just because I had given it to you.”

James grinned, sat down on the bed and began to pull on the stockings. “I’ll trade in my boots for something less distinctive and pick up a few things,” he said.

A dull fear gripped Thomas at his words, something quiet and paralysing. James settled his stockings, found Thomas’s shoes and slipped them on. He was going to leave. He was going to walk out of the room at any moment now, and Thomas was unable to speak and unable to stop him.

But James first came back to Thomas, holding his boots tucked under one arm and the bag of coins in that same hand. He gripped Thomas’s shirt where it lay over his breastbone, pulled him downwards and kissed him, his lips lingering even as he went to pull away. “I will not be long,” he promised.

“James,” Thomas said, just as James finally turned to leave.

He stopped, turned back and waited.

 _Don’t go_ , Thomas wanted to say. _Never, ever leave my sight again._ “Do not bring any weapons back here,” he said. “Not today.”

“We will need them soon enough,” James said.

“I know,” said Thomas. “But not yet. Not today.”

James nodded his acceptance, lingered a moment longer and then walked out of the door, leaving Thomas very abruptly and very unpleasantly alone. He was all the more so for the abundance of life he could hear downstairs and out in the town, which had faded from his awareness when he had had James to focus on and all came rushing back now. In James’s presence, Thomas had been able to remember another way to be; without him, all he had was himself and what he had become in James’s absence. The sounds of civilisation were something alien to his ears, discordant and out of step with his mentality. He was not accustomed to hearing new voices at all, let alone all together in such a large number. As difficult as it had been for Thomas to learn to live on the plantation, it was a lesson he had learned thoroughly and well.

He walked to the foot of the bed, where James’s old shirt lay in a heap. He picked it up and shook it out, wondering if it was something James would keep or something he would prefer to discard. It was a sturdy and well-made shirt, its colour a shade of purple Thomas had never seen before, and bore the marks of wear and tear and diligent mending. The smell, he suspected, would never come out. 

He draped it over the back of one of the chairs and sat in another, feeling uncomfortably short of breath and unsteady on his feet. He fixed his eyes on the shirt and held the image of James in his mind but still felt himself falling away. George Crutchley had taught him how to arrest this decline, if he could catch it early enough, but it had been a very long time since he had needed to do so. He tapped his stockinged toes on the floor and observed the panelling and texture of the chest on the other side of the room. He recited the alphabet forwards and then backwards, English and then Greek. He breathed in deeply through his nose, which he had been avoiding doing in James’s presence, and attempted to identify the multitude of smells that assailed his senses.

When James came back into the room, Thomas was standing by the window and watching wisps of cloud drifting in the deep blue sky. He turned to watch James close the door firmly behind him, drop its bolt and walk straight over to the mule chest, still wearing Thomas’s shoes and carrying a snapsack in one hand, half-full. He slung the bag onto the top of the chest, rummaged around in it and took out a large book bound in blue leather. Then he went straight to sit on the bed and held the book out toward Thomas, who had barely yet adjusted to James having returned at all.

He went and sat with his back against the headboard and his legs drawn up toward his chest, as he had been the day before. He took the book that was offered to him, noting the pale strips on two of James’s fingers. “Your rings,” he said.

James shrugged, lifting his feet up from the floor and scooting back on the bed so he faced Thomas, rubbing his unadorned fingers. “You’re holding them.”

Thomas turned the book over in his hands and flipped carefully through the pages, wishing he had put a greater effort into scrubbing his hands clean the previous day. It felt improper, somehow, to handle such a fine book with hands still marked by sweat and soil, but now Thomas had the book in his hands he was loath to surrender it. It was a book of poetry, aged but not much used. The name Anne Bradstreet was familiar to Thomas, having been among the volumes Miranda had brought to the house when they were married, but although he was sure he had looked at it back in those early days, he could not now bring to mind any of her work. “Are you familiar with these?” he asked James, who had resumed his close observation of Thomas’s features.

James nodded. “Some.”

Thomas held the book back out to him. “Your favourite,” he said. “Please.”

James blinked at Thomas, clearly not having anticipated such a request. He took the book from Thomas and frowned at it a moment, and then he lay down on his side facing Thomas, the book open on the bedding before him and his head close enough that Thomas could reach down and touch it, if he chose. He turned the pages a few at a time as his eyes scanned over them, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, until his breath caught and he lay his hand flat upon the page before him, closing his eyes for a long moment before he opened them again. He cleared his throat roughly and ran a finger softly down the page. His own hands were deeply ingrained with grime; it did not seem to give him any pause. 

“I had forgotten,” he said, his voice so quiet it broke on the final word. Thomas wanted to reach out to him but refrained, resting his hands on his knees and waiting to hear the poem that James had found.

James stared at the page for no small amount of time before he roused himself to begin. His voice was soft and steady as he read.

“ _As loving hind that, hartless, wants her deer,_ _scuds through the woods and fern with harkening ear, perplexed, in every bush and nook doth pry, her dearest deer might answer ear or eye, so doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss a dearer deer, far dearer hart, than this, still wait with doubts and hopes and failing eye, his voice to hear or person to descry_.”

He was gone away somewhere else now, his fingers absently caressing the page he read from. The words fell from his lips smoothly and easily in the way that only real and long-standing familiarity with a poem would allow.

“ _Or as the pensive dove doth all alone, on withered bough, most uncouthly bemoan the absence of her love and loving mate, whose loss hath made her so unfortunate, even thus do I, with many a deep, sad groan, bewail my turtle true, who now is gone. His presence and his safe return still woos, with thousand doleful sighs and mournful coos. Or as the loving mullet, that true fish, her fellow lost, nor joy nor life do wish, but launches on that shore, there for to die, where she her captive husband doth espy_.”

James took a moment to compose himself then, to still the tremor in his fingers, before reading on.

“ _Mine being gone, I lead a joyless life. I have a loving peer, yet seem no wife, but, worst of all, to him can’t steer my course. I here, he there, alas, both kept by force. Return, my dear, my joy, my only love, unto thy hind, thy mullet and thy dove, who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, the substance gone, oh me, these are but dreams_.”

James reached the bottom of the page, swallowed and spoke in little more than a rasp, no longer reading now but reciting.

“ _Together at one tree, oh, let us browse, and like two turtles roost within one house, and like the mullets in one river glide, let’s still remain but one, till death divide._ ”

James’s cheek was twitching; he blinked quickly and clenched his jaw in an attempt to still it. He did not look up from the page.

Thomas reached out and brushed his fingers along the creased cheek, the tense jaw. James raised his hand immediately to take Thomas’s and hold it where it was. There were tears in his voice when he spoke. “The tenor of this has changed a great deal since the last time I read it.”

“I can imagine,” Thomas murmured. 

“I thought something to read might help,” James said through a grimace that looked physically painful. He was still holding Thomas’s hand to his cheek in a grip so strong Thomas was beginning to lose the feeling in his fingers.

“It does,” Thomas said, offering no protest of the grinding pain in his hand. “May I?”

James pushed the book toward him, lowering their clasped hands to rest on the bed and laying his head on that same arm. His eyes fluttered closed for a second, but he opened them again and fixed them upon Thomas’s face, resolute and unwavering. His grip on Thomas’s hand was not quite so tight as it had been, and Thomas could bear it very well. 

He rested the book on his left thigh and turned forward one page to read the lines that James had recited from memory. There were two more that followed them, printed in parentheses and one line removed, that James had either not remembered or considered not to be a part of the poem itself:

_Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear,_

_At home, abroad, and everywhere._

Thomas could still taste the tang of the apples in his mouth, and it only made him more aware of the dryness in his throat. It was no way to read poetry, half-parched and still hungry and completely, painfully sober, but the Spanish Armada itself could not have moved Thomas from this bed in this moment.

So he turned back to the beginning of the poem and began to read. He did not need to look up from the page to know the intensity with which James watched him as he did.


	9. A Story is True - Day 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are a quarter of the way along! Thanks so much to everybody who’s read, left kudos and especially commented so far – onward we go!

James’s fever did not last past that first night; Thomas had woken after only a few hours to find him peacefully asleep, the sweat dry on his body and his breathing deep and calm. When the doctor had come to examine him shortly after dawn, he had pronounced it a “nasty turn” and suggested James spend that day and the one following at rest so as to be fit to resume his duties two days hence. Upon learning that James was so newly arrived he had not yet begun any duties, he had maintained his position that James should go out on the Sunday, as his health would be best served by being out in the fresh air and coming to terms with his new life, even if he was not yet put to work. 

Thomas had hoped at least that he would be the one to show James around the plantation and explain to him the various tasks he would be expected to perform, as he had been allowed to stay and tend to James as he recovered, but Mr Hawkes had not been inclined to alter his usual practice. He had come by on Saturday evening to make his own assessment of James’s recovery, and once he had been satisfied of it he informed them that the task would be assigned to Stephen Mattner, as was customary. Though it was usually only the work of a morning to familiarise a new prisoner with the plantation before he began his work that same afternoon, in light of James’s illness Mr Hawkes granted James and Stephen all of Sunday in order to allow for a gentler pace. 

Knowing very well that a full day’s induction was an indulgence the overseer had not been under any obligation to grant, Thomas made no protest about his choice in instructor for James, for all that it drove him to distraction once he was out in the fields and unable to do anything but work and wait for the day to reach its end. He turned the earth as he was directed, wore his hat as James had urged him and made every effort to focus on nothing but the task in hand. He had spent thousands of days doing such work, and every one of them had come to its end, whether it had been a good or a bad day and regardless of the difficulty of the work undertaken. So too would this day, once the proper time had elapsed and not a moment sooner.

Thomas worked steadily along his row, suffering the eyes of his fellow prisoners upon him. He exchanged brief words with first George Crutchley and then George Stevenson, his ear more keenly attuned to the sounds of the plantation than ever before as he allowed himself to ponder where James might be found in it at any particular moment. Flashes of memory came to him of the time he had been engaged in this exact work, his mind free and easy, and then had felt fate take hold of him and turned to see James standing right before his eyes.

That had been only four days ago, and Thomas felt something of it still: a fire banked in his blood, something biting and confronting in the taste of the air, a shadow cast over the life he had led here so quietly and without argument. There was no longer any satisfaction in the work he did. It had only been a pleasure to him when he had not had any real pleasure to compare it with, and now it was tedious and tiring, sapping him of vigour and energy. Time did not pass in the usual way; it crawled. When the whistle blew for lunch, Thomas thought for a moment it was dinner, and his heart jumped at soon being able to see James again. But food was brought to them, and they sat for half an hour in the shade and ate, and then it was back to work for the afternoon, which could not have been more hatefully long as it extended out in front of Thomas.

He did take the opportunity at lunch to make enquiries about David Mortimer, and the things he learned did little to improve his mood. David was living now with Wayland Wynne, had been sent out logging every day since James’s arrival and had been caught outside at night once already, on his way back to his previous lodging. Wayland was vexed to no longer be living alone and even more vexed to find himself under strict observation as a consequence of his new cabin mate, and there was talk that David would soon be moved again, though nobody had heard any indication as to where or when.

There would be no resolution to the problem of David Mortimer unless he was either taken in hand with sincere kindness and patience or faced with such harsh treatment as to definitively break him. Thomas had lived with him for three weeks and by the end of the first day had recognised that his single-minded drive and the strength of his convictions were what kept his heart beating and his spirit alive. He had done his best to dissuade David from taking extreme and immediate action and tried to soften the sharp edges of him that cut everyone they touched, but it had been plain there was a long and arduous journey ahead of him if David was ever going to be convinced to concede and comply.

Only last week, Thomas had been able to answer the questions that David liked to pepper him with: questions like _Do you really think we deserve this?_ and _How can you defend the man who keeps you captive?_ and _Do you truly just blithely accept that our lives have been taken from us and we can never have them back when neither of us have done anything wrong?_ A week ago, he had been confident that the answers he gave were unpalatable but necessary for survival here. David was standing at the beginning of a long and bitter journey but one that had a kind of tranquility at the end of it. There was no returning to a past that was lost to him, and there was no promise of any future that would offer more than what he could lay claim to now. Thomas had spent a decade making the best of a bad situation, and he had the reward of it now, living a life at peace with himself and in what would be considered by the majority of the world’s population as an unusually high degree of comfort and convenience. 

But that had been last week, back when past, present and future had been defined and separate categories uncorrupted and uncontaminated by each other and Thomas had considered he had a full understanding of the things that were possible and the things that were not. Thomas remembered David standing before him on their first night together, demanding that Thomas explain to him how submission to a master could be considered anything but cowardice, his face still smeared with the blood that had been spilled bringing him here. 

Those questions rang differently in Thomas’s ears now, setting his nerves on edge and threatening to bring the order he had imposed on his mind crashing down. So he thought of James instead, both as he had been and as he now was. He thought of him moving through the plantation with Stephen, being shown for the first time all the things that Thomas had lived with for years: the toolsheds and the barracks and the washhouse, the fields of corn, beans and squash that fed the prisoners, the kitchen yard with its chickens and goats and garden, the barns and the pasture and the hayfields, the stables and the little blacksmith tucked in behind them, the cane fields that extended eastward all the way to the great sugar mill that had been built over the course of one very difficult year and and had now been in operation for nearly five.

Stephen Mattner had been on the plantation for four of those years and in that time had come to know as much about each and every part of the plantation as anybody did. He was a very strange man from a very wealthy Warwickshire family, and he had such a hunger for knowledge and such a drive to understand the world in all its unvarnished truth that it did not surprise Thomas in the least that his family had sought to be rid of him. He was very particular about the way he lived and the nature of his interactions with others, and prone also to great fits of temper when challenged or contradicted. 

Though he was a very thorough instructor whose expertise could not be questioned, Stephen’s manner among men had for some time prevented him from being considered suitable for the task he was now engaged in with James. But in this, as in everything, Stephen had expressed a strong desire to improve himself, and so Thomas had spent time with him where he could, sharing what he had learned about the struggles men faced when they arrived on the plantation and sharing, too, what he had learned over the course of his life about anger and how it could best be managed. Once he had gained a better understanding of the nature of his mind and how best to engage with him, Thomas had found Stephen a highly interesting conversationalist and had come to consider him a friend, but the road to their mutual understanding had not been a smooth one. Stephen was far from being a large man, but he carried a great fury inside him quite unlike any Thomas had known before. The most unexpected things could draw his ire, and when he became fixated on a subject it was nearly impossible to move him from it. He did not accept the truth of anything until it could be satisfactorily explained to him; Thomas had never faced such a conversational challenge as the morning he had spent with Stephen in the washhouse trying to make the argument that social niceties among acquaintances could be a valuable source of human connection, where Stephen had been adamant such things were nothing other than a condescending waste of time.

Thomas saw good reasons why James and Stephen might get along, and he held out hope that they would, but if either one exposed the volatility of the other and nobody was there capable of mediating between them, the consequences of it could be catastrophic. It was best, of course, that James formed bonds with the other men here, but it all felt too abrupt, too rushed and too far out of Thomas’s control.

By the time the final whistle blew, Thomas’s jaw ached more fiercely than any of his limbs, his feet or his hands. His head ached from the strain of all that he had restrained and repressed, and even the muscles of his face were sore, frowning as they had been for most of the day.

“Here,” said George Stevenson, taking Thomas’s tools from his hands before Thomas could protest or argue. “I’ve got a headache just from watching you all day. Go and find him, will you, and let us all breathe.”

Thomas had passed through the east gate, the west gate and had taken ten steps up the path to the prisoners’ cabins before realising how unlikely it was that James would already be there, if he was beginning to be integrated into the daily life of the plantation. He might well still be out with Stephen, since they had been given the whole day and Stephen had several months’ worth of information about the plantation that he would be only too happy to share with an interested listener – or, indeed, any kind of listener at all. If they were still out, there would be no hunting them down. Once work stopped at the final whistle, movement of prisoners from west to east was strictly forbidden unless one had both permission and supervision, neither of which Thomas had any chance of obtaining.

The most sensible approach would be for Thomas to go and eat his dinner without further delay. He had missed too many meals in the days after James’s arrival as it was; if he went back to his cabin now and found James there, he knew he would not leave it again and would spend another night hungry – a practice that should not be allowed to continue any longer than it already had done. To deprive himself of food was not only foolish but dangerous. When hunger gained a foothold in Thomas’s mind, it invited much worse things in after it.

When Thomas entered the dining hall, there were only three other men in it: Billy Cobden, glumly bringing bowls of rice and beans out from the kitchen and placing them on the front table to be collected, and James and Stephen sitting at a small table in the far back corner. Stephen smiled politely to see Thomas come in; James stared across the room at Thomas, transfixed, until Stephen said something to him and he remembered where he was. Thomas collected a bowl for himself and walked down the hall toward them, feeling the pressure lift off his shoulders and a smile growing on his own face. 

“This is a very clever man,” Stephen said in his loud, flat voice as Thomas approached. “He learns as quickly as any I have met.”

“I know,” Thomas said, sitting beside Stephen and opposite James, pride growing in him for all the world as though the compliment had been directed his way. 

“Mmmm,” James said, locking eyes with Thomas with half a smile on his face. He had already cleaned out his bowl and was worrying at his teeth with his tongue, looking fatigued but also quite remarkably at ease. Stephen had clearly been making the bulk of the conversation; he was barely halfway through his own meal and seemed to have quite forgotten it for the time being. Thomas returned James’s smile, as he could never help himself from doing, but he looked away again as Stephen continued to speak. James was all his but could not be only his; Thomas would not subvert any understanding the two of them had come to by commandeering his attention now, much as he found joy in every private glance, smile and tilt of the head. 

“The mechanisms of a sailing ship are really remarkably intricate,” Stephen said, his long face solemn and his forehead wrinkled in thought. Thomas began to eat, confident that he would not be required to respond for quite some time. “I have been on very few ships myself – other than the obvious, and I can’t say I much enjoyed that experience – but I consumed a great deal of literature on the topic as a boy. Of course, I have not had access to several years’ worth of scientific developments on this subject. Nor has James, he tells me, having largely been occupied by his business as a pirate in years past, but he has what I would consider extensive knowledge of the principles and dynamics involved, and I have found his discourse highly informative. Very few men of action, I find, have so keenly an intellectual understanding of the things they do, much less the ability to communicate it in a comprehensible fashion to those significantly less informed. Very few educated men have the impetus and the gumption to so powerfully impose themselves upon the world as James has done. Very few men of such humble origins become men of action or educated men in the first place, much less both. It is remarkable, really quite remarkable.”

“Well,” said Thomas, trying not to look at how James had taken this quite overwhelming torrent of praise, knowing he would not be able to keep his own composure if he were to look him in the eye. “I am glad you have found each other to be good company.”

“If there was any justice in this world, Mr Mattner would be given stewardship of this plantation,” James said, his drawl all the richer for following Stephen’s rather monotonous manner of speaking. Thomas risked a brief glance at James, and there was amusement on his face, yes, but that was for Thomas alone. His words regarding Stephen were sincere. Indeed, he must have liked him to have already spoken to him of his birth, his education and his time at sea, to be so comfortable already being addressed by him as James and to have sat and stayed with him after he had already finished his own dinner.

“Were I to do so, someone else would need to manage the men,” Stephen said seriously. “I am not at all suited to that.”

“Thomas can manage the men,” James suggested with a glint in his eye.

Stephen shook his head. “Thomas is too kind,” he said, “and too prone to conversation.”

James laughed out loud at that, his smile as wide as Thomas had ever seen it.

Stephen looked quite taken aback; he did not much like being laughed at. “I hope that is not an offensive statement,” he said haltingly to Thomas.

James raised his eyebrows and invited Thomas to answer, his smile still lingering. He looked well, calm and centred as Thomas could not have imagined so soon after an illness that had seen him miserable and insensible in Thomas’s bed. He had been out and about all day and had not yet come to the end of his strength, though Thomas suspected he would soon be approaching it. Perhaps the doctor knew what he was about after all.

“Thomas?” said Stephen, truly uncertain now. “Was that an offensive statement?”

Thomas forced himself to address Stephen and leave his contemplation of James to a later time. “I have all my life pondered the nature of kindness,” he said. “I was not raised to value kindness nor encouraged to pursue it as a youth, and I was very rarely accused of it in my political career. Kindness is a small thing, I think, and all the more powerful for it, and those whose views are fixed on a wider world cannot narrow their vision enough to perform any true act of kindness. But we change, of course, as we move through the world. I have encountered real kindness here, and I have found myself eager to replicate it in my own works. Marcus Aurelius tells us that kindness is invincible so long as it is sincere. Accompanied properly by wisdom and good sense, I do not know that it is possible to be too kind.”

James laughed again, a quiet gust of breath accompanied by a quirk of the mouth. Thomas had not expected to garner such a reaction; Stephen looked utterly baffled by it. “You can take the man out of the salon, but you cannot take the salon out of the man,” James offered by way of explanation. 

Stephen looked back and forward between the two of them, thinking hard. Rather unusually, he kept his thoughts to himself. 

“Prone to conversation, yes,” said Thomas. “I will give you that one.”

James opened his mouth to speak but stopped as the door opened and a group of half a dozen men came in, jostling around the front table in an effort for each to lay claim to the bowl of rice that he judged as the best.

“What do you think of the work?” Thomas asked.

Something foreign flickered behind James’s eyes, but only for a moment. He looked back to Thomas, his manner more subdued but still appearing generally at ease. “I have had harder days,” he said simply.

“Most men who come here are not at all accustomed to a life of labour,” said Stephen. “Many are unwell or otherwise incapable, at least in the beginning. They come with soft hands. I certainly did, in my time. Do you remember Tracy, Thomas, when he first arrived?” 

“I do,” Thomas said.

“This is the Tracy I have met?” James asked.

Thomas nodded. “It is.”

“Tracy Hawtrey was as strong and healthy as any man when he came here,” Stephen told James. “He refused to work for a time, insisting that to work the land went against his essential nature. He said that to force him to do so would be an affront to God’s own creation and the order he had placed on the world and the men in it. Thomas argued him out of that in no short order.”

“Genesis,” said James.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Any man who wishes to argue with Thomas about God’s creation should first be made aware of his full and complete knowledge of the book of Genesis and his ability to turn it to any end that may serve his purpose,” James said. 

“ _Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it_ ,” said Thomas. 

_You see?_ James said to Stephen with only a look, which he then shared with Thomas, the laughter back in his eyes.

“It is perplexing in the utmost to think that reference to scripture can turn a man’s opinion so completely one way or another,” Stephen said. “As a Christian man, I would think Tracy had already read the Bible, and presumably he had understood it when he read it. How, then, could reference to a text he had already read and understood change his mind on a point he had already decided? There is no sense to that at all.”

“My grandfather was Catholic and my father a Protestant,” said James. “They read the same Bible and could not have been more different in the lessons they extracted from it. It is not what the book says but the manner in which it is read which proves most persuasive.”

“Your grandfather was Catholic?” Stephen said, picking up his spoon but then only holding it in the air as he awaited James’s response.

“My mother’s father,” James said. “Yes.” 

“And your mother?”

“Dead long before I knew the word for either,” James said.

“Fascinating,” said Stephen, putting his spoon into his bowl and stirring it a little. “You must have some great insights into the true nature of that divide. There are some Catholics here, I am led to believe, but none of them wish to speak to me about it.”

“Is that so?” James said drily. “Unfortunate.”

“There is freedom of religion here, of course, but in practice it does not amount to much,” Stephen said. “I thought we should take a census, perhaps, in order to better allocate our resources, but the idea was not warmly received. This is the stupidity of persecution. It becomes impossible to learn the truth when people are afraid to tell it, and without the truth there can be no improvement of our lot.” He ate one spoonful of rice and then set his spoon back down. “I am sure the scripture would agree.”

“I am sure it would,” said James. “I’ll leave that to Thomas.”

Thomas scraped the last grains of rice out of his bowl and pushed it away from him. “ _Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another_ ,” he said. 

“There you are,” said Stephen, eating three quick mouthfuls and setting his spoon down yet again. 

“Though it is also said the truth shall make us free,” said James. “This I have not always found to be the case.”

“And you were imprisoned by a lie, Thomas, were you not?” Stephen asked. “You were said to be driven mad by a thing that had not occurred.”

“I do not wish to speak of it,” Thomas said. He wondered at James’s easy disclosures and his level of comfort after spending only one day with a man it had taken Thomas months to develop a true rapport with and with whom even now he was loath to speak of those things most private to him. 

“That is perfectly understandable,” said Stephen. He picked up his spoon and resumed his meal. Another group of men entered the room, laughing and talking loudly among themselves. James watched these men as he had watched the others, unconcerned but keenly observant.

“Do you know where you are to begin working?” Thomas asked him. “Is it to be tomorrow?”

“Mr Mattner is to make his report to the overseer this evening,” said James. “I am not privy to its contents.”

“I have not yet come to any concluded view,” Stephen said. “There is a great deal to consider. Mr Oglethorpe considers he has an obligation to us all, a duty to protect and nourish those he keeps here, and so we customarily begin lightly. Physical resilience must be built properly before it can be relied upon. You have come from privation and hardship and been ill besides, yet you have long ago learned resilience and in your weakened state could already outwork half the men here if you were motivated to do so, though I am not sure that such an effort would be sustainable for you past a few weeks. What’s more, it would not be most advantageous to the work of the plantation to confine you to tasks of simple manual labour when you have a mind and an education that could better be applied to far more specialised and valuable tasks that most here are not capable of performing. Of course, there is also your reputation to consider, little bearing though that has on your capability and suitability for any particular task. Mr Oglethorpe may wish to keep you from fraternising with the men for a time, lest your influence cause distress and disruption. He may wish to set you to the meanest tasks in order to test your compliance and show that here you are no different to any other man, whatever you may have been before coming here. It is a puzzle, indeed, and will require much consideration. I am very glad I was given more than just the morning to make my assessment; I only wish I had a little longer. Perhaps in these special circumstances I may be granted some further time to reflect.”

After a moment’s reflection of his own, James looked at Stephen with a smile in his eyes. “I imagine you also had some quite compelling arguments to make on your arrival here as to why you should be assigned work that was not simple manual labour,” he said. “Today you have had an even easier day than I have.”

Stephen smiled widely, delighted as a child. “You really are a very clever man, Mr McGraw.”

Another wry look at Thomas, then. _Note every compliment I receive_ , that look said. _See how I am admired._ “So I am told,” he said with no trace whatsoever of humility.

Stephen nodded. “I can understand Mr Oglethorpe’s concerns. You really could be quite devastating to his operation, if you chose to be.”

The light in James’s eyes went out as if snuffed like a candle. Stephen’s words echoed in Thomas’s ears, the resounding truth of them impossible to ignore when spoken aloud.

“Many of us are quite happy with our lives here,” Stephen went on, following his train of thought without observing the effect it had had on those he spoke to. “But your arrival is different from any other I have witnessed. The men know who you are, and that cannot be ignored. The efforts that are being gone to to keep young David Mortimer away from you are unprecedented in all the time I have been here.”

“Every man here is different,” said Thomas. He had watched a weight settle onto James’s shoulders and seen his expression grow distant, and so he spoke quickly and instinctively in an attempt to arrest the decline. “We are all made free of our pasts and given sanctuary here. This is as true for James as it is for any one of us.”

“Oh, I do apologise,” Stephen said, finally looking at Thomas and then James. “I do apologise. I did not mean to cause any distress.” 

James grunted and ran the tip of his middle finger around the rim of his bowl, his eyes lowered to follow its progress and the other fingers of that hand raised stiffly in the air. Thomas watched the slow and controlled motion, powerfully compelled to take those fingers and entwine them in his own but suspecting James would not welcome such a thing where it could be observed by so many. Stephen watched as well, glancing anxiously at James’s face from time to time, now aware of the mistake he had made but uncertain as to its means of repair. 

“I do not think, sometimes, before I speak,” he said, more so to Thomas than to James.

James lifted his chin and regarded Stephen coolly, stilling the motion of his hand but not yet removing his finger from the bowl. “I hold no grudge against you for speaking honestly,” he said, and there was something of the lieutenant in him then – something stiff and upright and noble that Thomas recognised as a measured retreat. “In fact, I prefer it.”

Stephen took him at his word, as he overwhelmingly tended to do, and thus considered the conversation reopened, visibly relieved that James was not upset with him. “I know David is quite desperate to speak with you,” he said. “I was very strictly told to ensure our path did not cross with his today. I have never received such an instruction before.”

“What is it that they fear I will say to him?”

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Stephen, shaking his head. “It’s not that at all. Regardless of what you say or do not say, David will be undeterred. He cannot be reasoned with. What they fear is, I think, that you will listen to him and be reminded of what you were. They fear he will move you to action, where you would otherwise be inclined to acquiesce.”

“He would be the malign influence in this case,” James said dubiously, “not me.”

Stephen nodded.

“They think I am so easily moved by a man I have never met.”

“They do not know what to think,” Stephen said. “This is truly an unprecedented circumstance we find ourselves in.”

“Yeah,” James said, and then he turned to Thomas. “I am weary,” he said, and though the statement was a calculated one, it was no less true for that. “Are we free to leave?”

“There is nothing more that must be done today?” Thomas asked Stephen.

“No,” said Stephen. “My final responsibility was to see that he ate and make sure that he knows he is expected to come out for breakfast tomorrow with all the rest of us.”

“And you have now done both,” said James. “Any time you wish to thank me for getting you out of doing any real work today, I will hear it.”

“I am very much obliged,” Stephen said with a sly grin, nodding as James and Thomas rose to their feet. James followed Thomas in taking his bowl and setting it on the side table to be collected and taken back into the kitchen, and they left the building together just as Martin Lawrence, Tracy, George Dalton and George Stevenson were coming the other way.

Tracy had met James briefly the previous evening, when he and Thomas had been sitting outside their door watching night fall over the plantation on James’s second and final day of rest. Tracy and Ned had been coming back to their own cabin, and Thomas had taken the opportunity to make the requisite introductions. Ned had been at pains to be polite; Tracy had put a minimal effort into being the same. James had shaken their hands, accepted their welcomes and offered his thanks for the assistance they had rendered two nights ago. Tracy had been mollified by his manners and even given Thomas a little approving nod as he left; Ned had scowled, said that anyone would have done the same and stomped off to follow him.

Tracy now bid them good evening and continued on to dinner, leaving Martin and both Georges to slow down and stop to one side of the door, in clear expectation of an introduction. There was no avoiding such formalities, but Thomas was eager to conduct them promptly and leave just as quickly, before more men came who would expect the same. “James, this is Martin Lawrence, George Stevenson and George Dalton,” he said, indicating each man in order. “Gentlemen, James McGraw.”

“It’s marvellous to meet you after such a long time, Mr McGraw,” said Martin, shaking James’s hand firmly. He was a man who gave an impression of being quite daft but in truth was far from it. A wide, vacant smile and weak chin had seen Martin assumed to be simpleminded on more than one occasion that Thomas had witnessed, and he liked to play it for all it was worth. Here, though, he put on no such pretence, letting friendly curiosity shine in his eyes as he looked James over. “I’d bid you welcome, but I’m never sure if that’s the done thing when you’ve just been sent to a prison to work until you die. I can tell you some don’t appreciate it at all.”

“Thank you,” said James. “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I look forward to our paths crossing again one day soon,” said Martin. “My stomach draws me onward.” He smiled amiably at them and then hurried on into the building.

George Dalton held out his own hand with ill-disguised distaste, which of course provoked James to smile as he shook it and hold on a little longer than was necessary. “There are always arguments here about which men deserve this place and which do not,” George said, his tone grim. He was one of the oldest men on the plantation, perhaps as many as ten years older than Thomas. His hair was as grey as his eyes, and the lines on his face were not kind ones. He had never done Thomas any ill, but he was unfailingly cold and unbending and Thomas had never been easy around him. “There are few for whom it can categorically be stated that being sent here was a stroke of good fortune and a far better fate than he deserved.”

“I am very sorry to deprive you of an argument, Mr Dalton,” James said, aggressively cordial. “I hope you will not hold the simplicity of my case against me.”

George walked inside without another word. That left George Stevenson, who had once been a soldier and who now regarded James with undeniable respect and open fascination. James looked at him with rather more interest than he had the other two; George was handsome, well-proportioned, tall and proud in his bearing, with thick brown hair and eyes so dark as to be almost black. His complexion was darker than most, and there was some talk of his father having been Moorish, though Thomas had not heard as much from his own mouth. He was good-humoured, clear-eyed and undemonstrative; Thomas liked him a great deal, though their paths did not cross as often as he would like.

“I first heard of Captain Flint when I was nineteen years old and fighting in the Spanish Netherlands,” George told James. “I first heard of Lieutenant James McGraw when I arrived here eight years later. I never once thought I would meet either the nightmare or the ghost, let alone both in the same man.” James nodded his acknowledgement of the statement but said nothing in response to it. George, seeing the look in his eyes, gave him a small sympathetic smile. “But we are all ghosts here, I suppose,” he said. “We all have our nightmares.”

“Are you a man who deserves to be here, then?” James asked him.

“Perhaps so,” George said lightly. “Perhaps not. But I wouldn’t be listening to fucking Dalton when it comes to who deserves what. He’s just in a sulk because he likes being the big, bad wolf around here, and now you have arrived he cannot possibly remain so.”

“He’s welcome to be it,” James said, squinting his eyes as though to protect against the sun. “There is nothing in that for me.”

“I can well believe it,” George said, “but I don’t think you’re going to get to choose.”

“No,” said James. “I imagine not.”

George offered James his hand again, and they exchanged twin nods before George turned and entered the dining hall.

“Let’s go,” Thomas said as soon as he was gone. “Before there are more.”

There was still tension in James as they set off toward their cabin, but it faded enough as they walked that Thomas judged conversation would not be unwelcome. 

“I am glad you liked Stephen,” he said. “I feared you might not.”

“It is a relief to spend time with a man whose thoughts are straightforward and whose motives are rational and clearly articulated,” James replied. “There are not many men like that.”

“There was no strife between you?”

“No,” said James, his tone curious. “What strife would you have anticipated?”

“A difference of opinion, perhaps. An observation incautiously expressed.”

“I am always cautious.” 

James gave no indication that what he had said was intended to be ironic, even as Thomas watched him for several long moments as they walked. He also gave no indication that he was aware of Thomas’s scrutiny, but surely there could be no doubting it. What else was there in the universe that Thomas would ever want to look at?

“How was your day?” James asked as they neared their cabin, finally glancing across at Thomas.

“Interminable,” Thomas said. “I missed you.”

James nodded his agreement. “How quickly we become greedy.”

How quickly, indeed. Thomas took a few brisk steps forward to open the door for James, who exhaled heavily as he walked through. Thomas closed the door behind them and looked about the room, a warm glow filling him when he saw the two cots still dragged together, just as he had left them that morning.

James sat down on a stool and began to take off his shoes. “I need to sleep if I am to begin work tomorrow,” he said, suddenly brusque. “The morning comes early and the day has been long.”

Tomorrow would be another day with James only at its beginning and end and absent from its middle, and Thomas could not bear the thought of it. When the time came, he would have no choice but to accept it; he did not want to think of it just yet. “When night has fully fallen, sleep will come,” he said. “There is light yet to see by.”

“And what would you propose we do until then?” James’s eyes were keen on Thomas; he sat still but was by no means at rest.

Thomas reminded himself that James had been ill and that what he needed above all else was rest and recuperation. What Thomas wanted desperately to do and what he could in good conscience suggest they do were worlds apart.

James rose and came to Thomas, reading his unvoiced thoughts effortlessly and completely. He took Thomas’s hand and stepped in close to him, his fingers running along the back of it so very lightly. Here Thomas could make a memory to sustain him through tomorrow; he could create something else to torment his thoughts by its distance while he was out to work in the field. James stood so close that Thomas could think of nothing else, his very presence an offer Thomas could not possibly refuse. 

This was not how it had been in London. This was not two idealistic young men astounded and enraptured by their discovery of each other. Thomas did not now look at James and see his future shining brilliantly ahead of him; he had learned to live only in the present, and in it he wanted nothing but James, whatever his past may have been and whatever the future might hold in store for either of them. If James was indeed only a little sparrow flying past, Thomas would reach out, take him in hand and hold him close; he would make himself a gift of the time they had been given together.

“The sun will go down, Thomas,” James reminded him, his smile small and affectionate. “It will not wait for you.”

Thomas took James’s other hand in his and leaned forward and kissed him, soft and lingering. His heart began to beat like a drum in his chest. Heat rose in him, low and insistent. James, for his part, had no hesitation in turning a gentle kiss into a hungry one, lifting his chin and stepping yet closer, so barely a breath existed between their bodies.

They let go of each other’s hands in the same moment. Thomas put one around the back of James’s neck and laid the other on his cheek to steady him so Thomas could kiss him more thoroughly, more deeply, so he could lose himself as he was so desperately ready to do. James ran his hands firmly up Thomas’s chest, fingers splayed against his shirt, and then quickly dropped down to untuck the shirt and come up again underneath it, sending shivers down Thomas’s spine even as his blood boiled.

When someone knocked loudly on the door James stilled, his hands hot on Thomas’s ribs and his lips brushing lightly against Thomas’s. For a moment, Thomas did not know where he was. The fact of someone having knocked slipped immediately from his mind; it occurred to him to wonder why it was he and James had stopped and what was preventing them from carrying on exactly as they had been.

He was not left wondering for long. There was another brisk knock at the door, and James bowed his head, leaning forward so that his forehead collided gently with Thomas’s nose. “Do not answer it,” he murmured. “For God’s sake, do not answer it.”

Thomas gathered every ounce of willpower he had ever possessed and leaned away from James, tilting his chin upwards with a finger so they could look one another in the eye. “Would you prefer they came to look in the window to see if we are in?” he asked, hating every word as it came out of his mouth, hating that he had to accept this but knowing that he must. “There is no choice but to answer it.”

James resisted a moment longer then removed his hands from inside Thomas’s shirt and tucked it back in, precise and resentful. Thomas saw the tremors in his hands as he did so, and the little wise corner of his brain told him it was just as well they had been disturbed. 

Once James had looked Thomas up and down and considered him presentable, he swung around to go and answer the door. Thomas had never seen such a thing before and felt himself smiling as he watched it, despite how exceptionally unwelcome the interruption had been. James was not a guest here, this meant. Here, of all places, they finally found themselves equal. 

“Mr Oglethorpe wants to see you, Mr McGraw,” said Yardsley from the doorway. “I’m to take you up immediately.”

James took two deep, steadying breaths. “Right,” he said, and went to put his shoes on again.

“Thomas,” Yardsley said from the doorway, with a friendly nod in his direction.

“Good evening,” Thomas said, in what he hoped was a suitably agreeable tone. 

“He wants to discuss your assignment, I think,” Yardsley said to James, stepping out of the doorway as James approached it. James turned toward Thomas so they could share one last moment of barely-contained frustration, then stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Thomas took a long moment to stand and think, to free himself from frustration and anger and prodigious disappointment so that he could face the rest of his day with something approaching a rational mind. 

Then, once again, he resigned himself to wait.


	10. A Story is Untrue - Day 5

Thomas woke on Sunday morning to a room bathed in gentle morning light with only a low murmur coming from downstairs, and his first thought was to hope that when he turned his head he would see James’s eyes closed and not open, that he would be soundly asleep and remain so for long enough that by the time he woke, Thomas would be both ready and willing to face another day in his company. 

He took a moment to reflect on that thought and was devastated by it. _I am with you_ , he had told James on that first day, and he had known then that it would not be an easy thing. He had resolved to do everything in his power to help James reckon with his demons, and only four days later – not even four whole days later – he lay in bed and saw James asleep and was relieved that he would not have to talk to him for a little while longer. 

Thomas had been prepared to be patient. He had been prepared to face setbacks and obstacles and encounter no end of things that would bring him grief. He had expected them to walk a long, slow road together, helping each other along and stopping to rest when it all became too much. As time went by and progress was made, they would need to lean on each other less and less, though the need for it would never entirely dissipate. What he had not anticipated was that James would turn and walk in the opposite direction without warning; the fact that they had done so well in the very beginning made it even harder to understand how badly things had gone since then.

It had started on Friday afternoon, and Thomas had considered it physical exhaustion from all that James had been through and emotional exhaustion from all that had been said. When James had withdrawn from him and closed his eyes to sleep, Thomas had left him alone, taking the opportunity to sit by the window with the book James had brought him and read quietly for a time. When the light had grown too dim to read by, he had walked around the bed to check on James and had found him awake but unwilling to do much more than acknowledge Thomas’s presence. Matters had not improved from there.

The next day, when he was not absorbed in sewing discreet pockets into their new clothing or responding reluctantly to questions Thomas asked him, James had taken to dozing, sometimes for hours at a stretch, and yet seemed in a state of constant weariness in the time he spent conscious. When he was awake his moods dominated the room, shifting what had been an atmosphere of peace and recovery into something tense and sharp, a quagmire through which Thomas did not know a safe path. James would not leave the room but resented being stuck in it. He was visibly uncomfortable in silence but was not receptive to any conversation Thomas might offer. He was hungry, surely, but could not bear the thought of food. He stared wistfully at Thomas when Thomas’s attention was directed elsewhere but sometimes looked at him like he was a phantasm, tantalising and terrifying, who attracted and repelled his attention in equal measure.

Thomas knew that James was not behaving this way by choice. He was not angry with him for it. He could see James struggling to behave considerately, and occasionally he managed it. Once or twice he had been warm and sincere and had even smiled a little, but each moment that brought them closer made it even harder to bear when James’s expression inevitably closed over and he was gone from Thomas once again, angry and upset with himself for reasons Thomas could not begin to imagine. 

Thomas had gone out briefly twice, at times when things had seemed quiet out in the town, and even such simple tasks as purchasing food, enquiring about routes of land travel and having his feet measured for boots had been nerve-wracking and exhausting, and he did not stay out for long. He returned from these ventures with a distant sense of pride at having succeeded in them but a more overriding sense of shame at how much it cost him to do so, along with nagging guilt at having left James on his own.

There was only so much that Thomas could do when every effort he made to reassure James or distract him from his woes, even those that had some success in the short term, ended in exactly the same way. There was only so much that Thomas could do when James’s own best efforts at bringing them together caused him more distress than they brought comfort to Thomas. He was not strong enough to discover and dig out the root cause of the problem; without the reliability and consistency of his daily routine he found himself without a foundation from which to launch any proper initiative to improve his own wellbeing or James’s. He felt a great mental lassitude himself after spending so much time idle and existing now in a state of such wretched uncertainty. He learned not to trust the good moments he could make, and he could not bear the bad, and if he confronted this thing forcefully and directly, whatever it was, it might well shatter them both into pieces. The road they walked now spiralled steadily downwards, and James had gone on well ahead, leaving Thomas to choose between rushing down after him or turning back upwards on his own while he still could.

Thomas sat up slowly, and James slept on beside him. Thomas needed air. He needed space. He wanted to walk out in the dawn, feel the sun on his skin and have a moment away from everything that sat so heavily in this room. For the sake of his sanity, he needed to do it. James was a grown man, strong and resilient in the face of all he had encountered, and if he woke to find Thomas absent, he would survive it. As far as Thomas knew, he might even prefer it. 

He got out of bed and quickly dressed himself, striving to keep his mind clear and resist the frown that was threatening to become habitual. Once he was dressed he stood frozen for a moment, assailed by doubt. He did not know, and could not know, if waking up with Thomas nowhere to be found might be the last straw for whatever was amiss with James.

As Thomas stood there in two minds, James said something indecipherable and muzzy, just awoken from sleep. Thomas turned to see him lift his head from the pillow and wipe blearily at one eye.

“Join me for a walk this morning?” Thomas offered, keeping his voice light.

James made no answer, only laying his head back down onto the pillow and coughing lightly. 

Thomas felt his fists clench. He would not be able to tolerate for much longer this practice of responding to questions with silence and not even acknowledging that a question had been asked. “I will return shortly, then,” he said, forcing his hands open and attempting to will the tension from his body. 

When James just stared at him without speaking, Thomas turned and left the room. Once he had closed the door behind him, he took a moment to compose himself, fighting back the tears that suddenly threatened and the curses that bubbled up onto his tongue. Once he had settled himself, he began down the stairs.

When Thomas had lived in London he had sometimes considered going about like this, in the garb of an ordinary man with no indication of rank or station, but he had never brought himself to do it. He had feared he would not be able to pass by without notice, that he would be singled out by his speech, his behaviour or his bearing as not belonging, and then the physical danger he would be in was far too great. To bring anyone along as either protection or deterrence would be to defeat the purpose of the experiment; it would not work properly unless he did it alone. Once he had married and became responsible for more than just himself, the risk became even less appealing; if he put himself in any danger, he risked leaving Miranda at the mercy of his family, and that was quite simply out of the question.

Now, standing out in front of the inn and looking down the row of shops across the street, watching each shopkeeper go about their early morning business, Thomas wondered if any of the men and women passing by would ever believe that the man they saw was Thomas Hamilton, who had been the eldest son of the fourth Earl of Ashbourne. Even if he spent some of their coins on finer clothes, shaved his beard, found a wig and wore shining rings on his fingers, he knew he could never carry himself in the same way again. He did not remember how he had used to walk, stand or sit before he had become a man accustomed to daily labour. He did not remember how he had comported himself before he had spent over a decade in the custody of men who held absolute power over every aspect of his life.

He set off northward, walking first past the cooper, then the gunsmith, then the bookseller. A tired-looking young woman in an ill-fitting dress came toward him from that direction, holding two small boys by the hand as they hurried to keep up with her long strides. Thomas tipped his new hat and then wondered if that was the done thing here in the colonies in such a circumstance. He received a polite smile from the woman and silent stares from the boys as they passed, and so he considered the venture a success. Next came a group of four men wearing riding boots and soft brown caps, one of whom called out good morning and the rest of whom acknowledged him only with a cursory nod. Thomas nodded back. Only once they were past and the road was clear ahead of him, did he manage to unclench his jaw.

“Excuse me, sir,” a woman’s voice called out from across the street. Thomas tensed once more as he turned his head to see her.

There were three dark-haired women standing at the opening of a laneway between the jeweller and the haberdasher, two of them very young and the other of an age with Thomas. They were dressed finely, the two young women in blue and the older woman in a rich, dark green. The smaller of the young women was holding one gloved hand up in the air in Thomas’s direction, the other hand bearing a pale blue parasol at an angle that did nothing whatsoever to shield her from the sun. “Excuse me,” she called out again, her wispy brown hair flying about her face in the breeze.

Thomas turned to them, waited for a cart laden with timber to pass, then crossed the street. “Good day,” he said, his mind fumbling over what honorific, if any, might be required. 

“You are new in town, are you not, sir?” the young lady with the parasol asked curiously, taking no notice when the other nudged her gently with an elbow.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Thomas. “I am.”

“Elaine,” scolded the older woman. “Please.”

“My name is Elaine Northby,” she said, dropping Thomas a small curtsey and barely refraining from rolling her clear blue eyes. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Thomas,” said Thomas, bowing shortly. “Thomas Willoughby.” The first time he had ventured out into the town he had not given any thought to whether a false name would be necessary and, if so, what name he ought to use. When he had been asked for his name, he had spoken the first that came to mind that could not be traced back either to him or to James if anyone should come looking. He bore the name Willoughby out of necessity, but it did not sit well on him.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Thomas Willoughby,” said Miss Northby. “This is my sister Abigail and my dear aunt Elizabeth Hay.”

Thomas bowed again, still puzzled as to the intent of the conversation.

“We were just taking our morning perambulation. I am sorry to say the conversation had grown terribly stale.”

“It had not grown stale,” Abigail contradicted her gently. She was a woman well younger than twenty, with long dark hair, a pale complexion and a steady, thoughtful demeanour. Her voice was clear and refined. “You had become displeased with it.”

“I have since become more pleased with other things,” Miss Northby said, throwing Thomas an arch look. “Is that so wrong?”

Thomas realised to his horror that this woman, barely more than a girl, was flirting with him. He turned to the aunt, but she was fussing with one of the sleeves of her dress and would not look at him. The lines on her face spoke of a life of stress, which Thomas supposed was in no part down to her role as chaperone to Miss Elaine Northby. If Miss Northby behaved like this in her presence, it was fair to assume that the aunt wielded little to no authority or influence over the niece and likely had come to accept this sort of situation as being inevitable.

“Let him be, Elaine,” said Abigail. She gave Thomas a sympathetic look and a small smile. “My apologies, sir.”

The situation was inappropriate, and it was time Thomas removed himself from it. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Northby,” he said. “Miss Northby, Mrs Hay.”

Miss Northby laughed at him then, joyful and without restraint. “Nearly right,” she said. “Good guess, Mr Willoughby. But it’s Miss Northby, _Mrs_ Northby and Mrs Hay.”

Abigail – Mrs Northby – flushed and looked away from Thomas. 

“Shush, Elaine,” said the aunt, with little force.

“My apologies, Mrs Northby,” said Thomas. “I should not have presumed.”

“Oh, no, Mr Willoughby,” said Mrs Northby, lifting her chin and meeting Thomas’s eyes levelly despite the pink that still tinged her cheeks. “If my sister could make anything resembling a proper introduction, no misunderstanding would have occurred. There is no need for you to apologise.”

“Oh, tcha!” Miss Northby said. “You have lived too long in England, Abigail. There’s no need for any of that nonsense in the colonies.”

“There most certainly is,” said Mrs Hay. Miss Northby tossed her head and brushed her hair out of her face, her eyes on Thomas.

“I beg your pardon,” said Thomas, bowing to them for the third and final time. “Good morning.” He crossed back over the street and turned back the way he had come.

He felt a warmth toward young Miss Northby, and a gratitude that she was able to live so freely and without fear. She reminded him so terribly of Miranda when he had first met her, in her fearlessness and high spirits, but even Miranda had not been so brazen as to walk the streets with only a sister and an aunt and flirt so openly with a complete stranger – a man old enough to be her father, at that. Despite what James had said, the New World was not just the Old World writ large. There was something different here, some spirit in the air that Thomas had never encountered in all his time in England, and it could not all be put down to Thomas’s changed perception as the years had changed him.

That said, Thomas had finally gained a true understanding of consequences and how devastating they could be to a person who had once thought themselves free. Mrs Northby, who had lived in England, seemed to know of them too, or at least had more natural caution about her than her sister did. Life may be different here in the Carolina colony to what Thomas had known in London, but human nature did not change so dramatically and so completely over such a short span of time, Atlantic Ocean or no Atlantic Ocean. For every change that swept over society, there were agents who would resist it and do so to the very last of their strength. Miss Northby was innocent and lively, and Thomas wished there was something he could do to warn her of how much it could hurt to fall from such a height.

He found himself back at the inn and gave a strained smile to a tall man standing outside the door tapping his foot impatiently with his eyes on the road. He went upstairs, thinking that if James was of a mind to speak to him he might be consulted on those differences between old world and new, though he suspected that with the company James had kept, he would have little more grasp of social mores among the upper classes in the colonies than Thomas had himself gleaned from glimpses of ladies and gentlemen who came to the plantation and conversation among the men while he had been there. 

Every such thought flew from his mind when he opened the door and saw James sitting on the floor directly across from him with his back against the wall and leaning sideways toward the bed, one hand covering his face and the other laid flat on the floor as though to prevent him tipping over.

Thomas did not panic. He closed the door behind him, crossed the room and knelt in front of James, bending down to his eye level. 

James dragged his hand off his face and left it hanging limply in the air a few inches away. “None of it was _fucking_ necessary,” he said, his face straining to contain the agony that threatened to burst from it. He met Thomas’s eyes for the tiniest moment then tore them away, as though to look at Thomas hurt him more than any other thing. “None of it.”

Thomas could have no fear in this. He knelt, laid a hand on James’s shoulder and sought his gaze. 

“You were here,” James said, the tears flowing despite every effort he made. “The whole fucking time, you were here.”

Thomas stroked James’s cheek, which was damp beneath his fingers, and felt answering tears gather in his own eyes.

“She died,” James said, the muscles in his face gone slack and pure despair radiating from him. “She died, and you were right here.” He clenched his fist, unclenched it and then clenched it again. His chest heaved with breaths that were too rapid, too shallow, too painful to Thomas’s ears. “It wasn’tworth it. None of it was fucking worth it.”

“Miranda,” said Thomas. He had been waiting for days for James to finally say something, anything about her, and now that he had it was a knife to the heart. The sounds James was making were muffled now in his ears; they were joined by a dim ringing. His hand fell from James’s face. “Miranda is dead.”

James peered at him, red-eyed and momentarily lost for words. “You think I’d have _left_ her?” he said in choking disbelief. “Of course she is dead.”

 _Of course she is dead._ Thomas mouthed the words, feeling their harshness in his throat and hearing them again in James’s voice as he did. 

“I should have made it so much worse for him,” James said, and Thomas was jolted out of his shock by the sheer depth of malice in those words. “He knew. He fucking _knew_ you were here, and he did not tell me. He did not tell us that you were here.”

“James, please,” said Thomas. This was all far too much, too quickly. A march had been stolen on him; James had sunk into this state while Thomas had been exchanging pleasantries and trying to reacquaint himself with the world. The cool morning breeze was still fresh in his memory, and Thomas did not feel equipped to face either the pain that dwelled deep inside James or the answer to it he felt building in his own breast. “Please.”

“Please what?” James snapped. “Please fucking what?”

Thomas had no real answer for him. None of the things that had brought them to this moment could be salvaged. No entreaties could reasonably be made. “Please get up off the floor.”

“I will tell you of Captain Flint,” James said, making no effort to move. “You said you wanted to hear it, and I will tell you. Then I will tell you how close I came to stepping away from him in Charles Town, with Miranda by my side. I will tell you how it felt to shake Peter’s hand and feel for one moment like we could have been free of it all. I will tell you what became of Peter Ashe, and I will tell you what became of Charles Town.” He paused, and his face contorted even further. “I will tell you what I did to your father and your mother, and who it was that put me on their trail.”

“To my mother,” Thomas said, but James did not hear him. His anger was building and he spoke to the air.

“I will tell you how many of my men I led to their deaths and how many I killed by my own hand. We could stay in this shithole for months on the money they gave us, and I could fill every moment of every day telling you every last one of the things I did, and we could sit here and reflect on the fact that for all those years, for each step I took into the darkness, for each act of vengeance by which I condemned myself, you were alive and so goddamn fucking close to me. Let’s do that, hm? Let’s _account_ for Captain Flint, if you have the stomach for it.”

“I have the stomach for it,” Thomas said with a certainty he did not feel and with a calmness he did not truly possess. He was determined he would be able to stomach such an exercise, because the alternative did not bear thinking about, but it was not what was now at the front of his mind. “But first,” he said, looking at James’s tear-streaked face and his trembling lips, “I would like you to tell me what happened to Miranda.”

James sat there dumbly, caught in rage suddenly deprived of fuel. Did he think Thomas had never been shouted at before, that he would crumble in the face of a few hostile words? But then, James had never before spoken to Thomas in this way, and Thomas had never told James in any great detail about those who had. It had been understood between them to a degree, but unspoken, just as Thomas had had an idea about James’s father without having been told very much about him at all. James did not know, because Thomas had not told him, precisely how well Thomas was equipped to face down highly personal vitriol, how much practice he had had in it and how much easier it was to face coming from James, who he loved, than it ever was from the fourth Earl of Ashborne.

“What happened to Miranda,” James said, his voice hoarse and quiet. Thomas watched his face as he worked to put his thoughts back into order, to drag himself back from the precipice, to find something in himself other than anger and despair. He pulled himself into some semblance of composure by main force, and despite everything Thomas found himself marvelling at such a sheer display of willpower. “Yes,” James muttered, wiping his eyes. “Yes, of course.”

Once Thomas considered the moment had passed, he rose to his feet. “Please get up off the floor,” he repeated. James accepted a hand up and braced himself against the wall behind him, unsteady but at least on his own two feet. “I am sorry that you have been so badly hurt,” said Thomas, and he left it at that.

James stared at him, long and vague, still blinking away tears. He looked old, tired and so ready for it all to end. “When John Silver asked me what I would do,” he said, his words wandering, “if it turned out you had not been killed, if your father had instead secretly sent you away, I rejected the idea without question. I could not conceive of it. Everything I had done in the last decade was founded on the fact of your death. Your survival was an impossibility because I knew I could not possibly withstand the revelation of it.” His tone changed then, growing colder and dark. “I suppose he knew even then, when he asked, that it was true and had decided he would not tell me. But if I had given him an answer, a definitive answer, I wonder …”

Thomas stood still and waited.

“It would hurt far less,” said James, his mouth pursed in distaste, “if I had never learned that you lived. It would be easier for me now had you truly died all those years ago. It would all still make sense. I would have –” he swayed a moment, even though he leaned on the wall. “If you had died, I never would have had to see any of it through your eyes.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I would never have to see myself through your eyes.”

“Do not presume you can see any of this through my eyes,” Thomas said, taking him by the shoulders. James jolted at the touch, then stilled. Thomas pulled him to stand fully upright, guided him two steps around and sat him down on the bed. He went and brought a chair over and sat down in it facing James. “If you will judge yourself, let it be through your own eyes,” he said. “Leave my own perspective to me.”

James absorbed that, scratched his beard then looked across at Thomas as something occurred to him. With James on the bed and Thomas on the chair, slightly lower, their eyelines were perfectly level. “You do not complain that I just wished you were dead.”

“You didn’t.”

“Did I not?”

“I am listening to you very carefully,” Thomas said. “And no, you did not.”

“Hm,” said James. He put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head, rubbing both hands slowly over the back of it over and over again.

“I will say again,” said Thomas. “I am sorry you have been hurt so badly.”

“What of those I hurt?” James asked quietly, his hands stilling and his head lifting a little so he could peer at Thomas. “What of them?”

Thomas considered this, as he had been considering it for days. He would be considering it for a lifetime and doubted he would ever come to a firmly concluded view. “I do not know,” he said. “Was Miranda among them?”

James sighed and lowered his hands. He sat up mostly straight and shook his head, slowly gathering himself together once again. “I said some things to her over the years,” he said, sounding more lucid with each word, though he spoke with none of the precision or focus that had been so characteristic of James when Thomas had known him before. “Some were thoughtlessly cruel, some intended to hurt. I was not all I should have been for her. But no. She was –” he smiled an odd smile, tired and melancholy and ever so fond, his eyes glazed with tears. “It was the local mystery, puzzled over by the crew of the _Walrus_ and the residents of Nassau Town alike. _Who is Mrs Barlow, that she holds such sway over the dreaded Captain Flint? What witchcraft, what black magic is at her disposal that such a man as he has been so effortlessly tamed by her?_ They thought she used magic to give me life and control me, that the _Walrus_ and its crew were her personal plaything, directed to her own ends and mine and certainly not run for the benefit of the crew.” He sniffed. “They were right, of course, about that last part.”

“Mrs Barlow,” said Thomas, at a loss to know in whose honour that name may have been used.

“Mrs Barlow and Captain Flint,” said James, offering no further explanation. “During our voyage to Charles Town, she said to me how unrecognisable she must have become by then to anyone who had known her – unrecognisable even to her past self, as she had been before. In my eyes she had not changed a great deal, and I told her so, but in her view she was unrecognisable. I similarly thought myself altered beyond recognition, but she still knew me as the man I had been. We two recognised each other all the way through it. We two were alone in it. Now she is gone, and I no longer recognise myself as the man I was when she last saw me.

“Captain Flint is not only one man, you see,” he continued, the words flowing freely from him now he had begun, though they came out in a rasp. “There is not James McGraw, and then, after him, Captain Flint ever onward. The Flint who gathered together his first crew on Nassau is not the same Flint as set out to hunt the _Maria Aleyne._ The Flint who took the _Maria Aleyne_ is not the same Flint as led his men on the hunt for the _Urca de Lima_. The Flint who found the _Urca_ gold is not the same Flint as sailed into Charles Town looking to broker a peace, and the Flint who sailed into Charles Town is not the same Flint as sailed out of it again. The Flint who sailed out of Charles Town and led raids to execute magistrates is not the same Flint as pledged himself to fight alongside the Maroons to bring down an empire. The Flint who made that pledge is not the same Flint as the one who walked into a plantation in Savannah four days ago to find you. Captain Flint was born the moment my life was taken from me but has been built up ever since by the course this ... thing has taken. He has changed, as all men change, and there is no going back to who he used to be before, and there is nobody left now who has known all of him.”

“I recognise you,” Thomas affirmed quietly. “As I recognised you in the stories you told me of your life before I knew you, of your boyhood and the beginning of your career, so I recognise you now. You have always been the same man, and I recognise that man. I will always recognise that man.”

James stared at him, unreadable, then looked away, letting the statement pass without comment. 

“I will ask you again,” said Thomas, quite exhausted by having to repeat the question once again and truly dreading its answer. “What happened to Miranda?”

James brushed a hand over his right cheek and blinked several times very quickly. “She died quickly. She died so fucking quickly, and you were here, a hundred miles around the coast.”

Thomas was going to prompt him to go on, insist this time he continue his answer without diversion, but James raised a hand to forestall him and nodded slowly as he thought how to begin.

“I will tell you,” he said. “But to understand it, you must know who we were at that moment in time.”

Thomas could barely manage to nod, so tense he was in every muscle, so unprepared did he feel to receive this information, though he had been craving it for days.

James thought for a moment, his expression closed to Thomas. “Miranda did not allow herself expression of her anger,” he began. “Where I became an avatar of mine, she locked hers away and attempted to set herself on a smoother path. Perhaps if we had gone to Amsterdam or to Paris, she might have reached that place, but not in Nassau. In Nassau she fought to temper my anger and disregarded her own. She disregarded it, stifled it, only letting it out when she had reached the very end of her limits. She never learned to harness it and use it, and nor did she truly accept it as part of her being.

“She saw a civilised way of bringing Nassau back into England, where I was determined to demand it through blood and conquest. That was how we were, toward the end. She had wearied of the worst excesses of the task, and I fell deeper into them. But she spoke reason to me, and I saw that she had the right of it, and against everybody’s advice and everybody’s wishes, we went to Peter to seek his assistance, with his daughter to bring to him as a sign of good faith. Abigail we had stolen from Charles Vane, who had custody of her and sought a quarter of a million pounds in ransom. We returned her to her father for nothing, asking only an audience with him in return. 

“Peter was a governor notorious for his hatred of pirates. He and his men were zealots, eager to punish piracy wherever they found traces of it. He hanged not only pirates but those in any way associated with piracy: those who harboured pirates or who purchased their goods, those who were suspected of piracy with no evidence to prove it. It had taken a great effort to convince my men that this plan could possibly work. To do so, I had to tell them that we and Peter were old friends. The worlds began to collapse in on each other. Abigail remembered Miranda and called her Lady Hamilton, and as we sailed to Charles Town I remembered all that Miranda had been, the life that the two of you had led separate to mine. We were allowed to meet with Peter only because we had brought Abigail, and even then only because she demanded it. After having acceded to her request, Peter’s man warned us that he was still desperate for a chance to kill us both.”

Thomas could see this story unfolding, its conclusion inevitable. He knew what had happened to Charles Town, and he knew how Peter Ashe had died. Logically, he did not need James to tell him the rest.

“Peter said that he could sell our proposal to Whitehall but that the only way he could see it working was if I was willing to stand before them and tell my story. He said for peace to ever be conceived of, pirates needed a human face in Whitehall. To be able to humanise Captain Flint would change the whole picture. I was ready to do it. I would tell them everything. I shook his hand.”

He looked at Thomas, sorrow heavy upon him. 

“It was only when I had shaken his hand, when the deal was closed, that Miranda confronted Peter with what she had realised he had done. You know it, I think. He said he had confessed it to you. That part of what he told me, at least, I did believe.”

Thomas felt his head move in a slow nod, not thinking of Bethlem, trying to breathe as little as possible so that the remembered stench of it could not reach him. James could not continue quickly enough, to move Thomas’s mind onto other matters.

“I had thought her perturbed by the fact of our being in uncharted territory, by the visit we were making to the past and the uncertainty of the future it might lead to. She had not shared her suspicions with me, and I did not press her to share with me all that she felt. My own feelings were beyond coherent explanation at the time, and I assumed the same to be the case for her. But then she demanded an explanation for the clock, your clock in his home, and it all came out. She could not contain it, once she had begun. She had never learned how.”

Thomas watched tears well in James’s eyes again. He watched him blink them back until finally they spilled over.

“She wished death upon the governor of the Carolina colony, to his face. She indicated her will and desire to carry out the act herself. I did nothing and said nothing, for far too long. I was … I was not in a state of mind to – I had shaken his hand. I was thinking of myself. I thought we were putting an end to Flint, thought that whatever happened from this point, I could be myself again. I thought she had saved us both, saved me, seen a way to achieve our goal without violence and in a way that could possibly heal ... I had already begun to let him go.” 

He stopped then, unable to say any more, his face contorted with grief and a vain attempt to suppress his tears. Thomas sat further forward in his chair and put one hand on James’s knee. James shook his head and moved his leg away, drew in one long, slow breath through his nose and exhaled.

“It was on Miranda’s word that Charles Town burned,” he said. Thomas sat back in his chair and folded his hands together in his lap. “She wanted the city to burn and Peter to hang, and I did what I could for her. She did not live to see it, but I did everything I fucking well could.”

Thomas considered the fact that James had not told him the precise manner of Miranda’s death, and he truly thought about whether it was a point he would wish to pursue. A quick death, an immediate death. Was that not enough for him to know? Was it not all he could reasonably have hoped for?

“Who killed her?” he asked. It would not have been Peter himself. It could not have been Peter himself.

“Colonel Rhett,” said James. His mouth twisted, and his next words were bitter and grim. “Peter did not order it. He did not wish for it to happen. After the shot, he ordered his men to hold their fire. If he had not done so, I would have died along with her there in that room before I could even put my hands around Rhett’s miserable neck. But one extrajudicial killing was enough for that day; my execution would be carried out to the letter of the law. Peter was, after all, a civilised man.”

Thomas remembered Peter Ashe as a young man with bright eyes and a bright future, a man whose fierce dedication to the rule of law and resolute pragmatism had sprung from, Thomas had always thought, a persistent idealism kept well-concealed from public view. He knew there had been compassion and warmth in Peter when they had been friends, but so much could change in so many years. “He put you on trial. I heard of this.”

“He wanted to avoid the public trial,” James sneered. “He entreated me to make my confession to him and let him kill me quietly. Weak and pathetic piece of shit that he was, he offered me that and dared to say it was for my sake that he wished it, for _Miranda’s_ sake, when all he wanted to do was hide, just as Miranda had accused him of, from the consequences of his actions.” Something occurred to James and his eyes shot to Thomas, red and sore but piercing. “Peter told us you forgave him when he visited you in Bethlem.”

Thomas remembered the self-recrimination and the guilt that Peter had displayed on his visit. He remembered the understanding he had felt and the forgiveness he had offered. Things then had seemed so simple, and the world so small. “I forgave him his part in sending me there. I forgave him his weakness in bending to my father’s will.”

“Did you forgive him the great political advantages he reaped from that weakness? Did you give your blessing for him to stand your clock in his home in his new position as governor of the Carolina colony?”

Somewhere underneath the pain running all through Thomas, that barb stung very particularly and very deeply. The despair and distress of the wider topic of discussion were vast beyond Thomas’s ability to comprehend or express; this particular hurt was not. “I have known Peter Ashe for a very long time,” he said, hearing and wondering at the harshness of his voice. “I knew perfectly well that once the deed had been done, he would seek to capitalise upon it. Do not presume that my forgiveness was drawn out of me through deceit or ignorance or through my own pitiful state in that place. I knew full well the character of Peter Ashe at that moment, and I knew the limits of his apology. I forgave him still.”

James’s aspect grew cold, and Thomas felt for the first time a genuine distance between them. “You would not forgive him for Charles Town,” James said, and there was something of the imperative in his tone. “You do not forgive him that.”

Thomas took a long, long moment to consider his response. He would answer honestly, without fear or favour, and the consequences of that would be whatever they would be. “It is not my place to forgive him or otherwise,” he decided. “I am no arbiter of right and wrong, and I will not be treated as one. I am not judge and jury over you or Peter or Miranda or anybody, not when I am not one of the injured parties.”

James hated that answer, made it plain in the black look he gave Thomas, but he made no response to it.

“You said it would have been easier for you had I died in Bethlem, as you had been led to believe occurred,” Thomas said.

A flicker of doubt crossed James’s face – doubt, guilt, fear – and then was gone from view.

“It would be easier for me,” Thomas went on, “if you and Miranda had gone to the continent, rather than Nassau. It would be easier for me if you had never learned of this place at all.”

James was frowning now and breathing rapidly again, alarm growing in his eyes as he fixed them on Thomas and waited for the final blow to fall.

“It would have been easier had you never been appointed as my liaison to the Admiralty,” Thomas continued. “It would have been easier had our relationship remained one of professional friendship.”

“It would have been easier,” said James, his voice cracked and drained, having deflated in relief and exhaustion the instant he had understood Thomas’s point, “to have conceded the pardon point.”

“Yes.”

James’s hand shook as he rubbed it over his moustache, obscuring the twist of his mouth and partially disguising the nature of that twist. “It would have been easier had Miranda held her silence, endured Peter’s hypocrisy and allowed us to all work together for the betterment of Nassau, despite all she knew he had done.”

Thomas nodded. “But we are not, after all, rational creatures.”

James’s lips quirked again, but it was a mockery of his true smile and lasted only a fraction of a second. “No.”

Thomas’s heart was heavy, and it would be heavy now for all his days with the knowledge he now possessed. He did not yet know how to carry it, as James had been doing for so long. Even moving from his chair seemed an impossibility.

“There is one more thing,” said James. “There is one thing you may consider within your realm of forgiveness.”

Thomas knew what it would be. He was not, and James certainly was not, in a frame of mind to discuss such a thing, but then he had spent these last four days together with James and none of this had come out into the open until James reached this desperate state. Perhaps this was the only way it could be done. Perhaps it was best to have it all out, to plumb the absolute depths, and then all that would be left was to climb back up out of them. 

“Miranda told me of the ship your father sailed on in secret,” James said. “She had it from an old servant of hers with whom she maintained a correspondence. I told my crew that the _Maria Aleyne_ was a great prize, and I drove them to pursue her above all else. I chased her for weeks, hunted her down, and I found your father and your mother belowdecks. They offered me everything in their possession and more, but that was not why I was there. It was not why Miranda had sent me there. It is said that the murders of the Lord and Lady Hamilton were what turned Peter so violently against piracy in all its forms. I can well believe it.”

The strength of the rage that rose in Thomas took him completely by surprise. James watched him intently, hungrily, and Thomas felt his stomach roll. When Peter Ashe had come to Thomas in Bethlem, he had apologised sincerely for the thing that he had done. Here James brazenly declared that he had murdered Thomas’s parents, offered no hint of an apology and yet expected Thomas to provide him the service of a moral decision by way of the giving or withholding of his forgiveness. The deed itself was all but immaterial; James tested Thomas here in a way that spoke volumes of how he had conducted himself all those years as a pirate. It was desperate, devious and destructive, and Thomas would have no part of it.

“You did not listen to me when I told you I would not stand in judgement,” he said once he felt in sufficient control of himself to do so. He rose from his chair, walked around the bed without looking at James and stopped at the window, looking out at the township without seeing it at all. He saw glimpses of himself reflected in the glass, closed his eyes and reached for the right words. “I understand you are accustomed to pain,” he said. “I understand you have been in pain, in some form or another, ever since we parted. I do not wish to inflict more of it on you, and I would appreciate it if you did not seek to actively inflict such on yourself or on me.”

He swallowed and opened his eyes again but did not look back to James. He watched three women walk in step along the road, two brown hats and one yellow. He imagined pirates in blockade across the harbour and heard the phantom sounds of cannons and the screams of those women as the town was put to the sword.

“You are right,” James said. By the sound of it, he had turned around on the bed but not stood up from it. “It is wrong of me to do so, and I apologise.”

Thomas sighed. He truly could not muster any sadness over his father’s death, and only a very little for his mother. He had not mourned them when he first learned they had died, and he hardly felt more inclined to do so now. The tragedy here was James, James and Miranda and Thomas, and for all the dreadful, unthinkable things that had been relayed to Thomas since his return to the room this morning, this ploy of James’s, located as it was in the present and not the past, had somehow wounded his heart the deepest. 

He heard James moving on the bed and then his soft footsteps approaching the window. “Thomas,” he said.

Thomas turned around to see him standing slumped six feet from Thomas, by the foot of the bed, his bearing as different from that of Lieutenant McGraw as it was possible to be. His face flitted from expression to expression as he stood there, as though he were trying to remember the softer ones but could not muster the strength to make any of them last.

There was precedent for lovers going mad with grief, but even after these past days, this past hour, Thomas did not know that he had seen any signs of it on James. He could well believe that James had started out so after losing Thomas and then again after Miranda’s death, crazed and bloodthirsty, consumed entirely by what had been done to him and what he had lost. Was it the case that, having somehow survived all of his worst impulses, he had lived long enough to see that madness take a different shape? How often could such a state be observed as a grown, mature thing, one that had not burned out its vessel in a blaze of suicidal wrath but instead embedded itself deeply in a thinking man, learning to disguise and satisfy itself subtly over a lifetime of torment for its host?

Or was none of this madness, had none of it been madness, but a considered and rational response by an intelligent and ruthless man hell-bent on revenge at any cost? Thomas knew what it was to call a man mad when he was not. He knew how easily that label could be affixed to a person and how tantalisingly simple such a diagnosis could be. Thomas looked at the man standing before him and remembered the warning John Chisholm had given him in another world, another life that Thomas had lived. _I think you will like him,_ he had said to Thomas, _but for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t make an enemy of him._ It would be far easier – reassuring, in a way – to look at the path James had taken himself down and call it madness, but in Thomas’s experience James was not a man who ever lost control.

“Tell me what you think we can be, after all of this,” James said, still asking things of Thomas that Thomas should not be expected to give. The question was a cruel one evoking dreams from long ago: vain fantasies and half-made plans that Thomas had dreamed up during the three months that James had been away on New Providence Island. 

They could be none of those things any more. Thomas did not know what he himself could be, let alone James, and without any confidence on those matters how could he possibly express an opinion as to what they could be together? How could he, when James was at his lowest and Thomas had descended to reach him there, be expected to speak of the future?

“No,” he said. “I would first hear your own thoughts. I would first hear what it is you think we can be.”

He had a real fear, then, that he had gone too far. It was fair play to ask it, turn and turn about, but where Thomas had withstood the question as part of the barrage he was braced against, James faltered, froze and withdrew into himself, hollow-eyed and grey. But after one long moment, then two, he raised his eyes to Thomas’s and walked two steps closer. There was longing in his look, and reverence, and resolve.

“I found my –” he started, and then stopped. 

The seconds ticked by. James stood on the brink of speaking for a very long time, and Thomas could do nothing but wait for him to make his answer.

“It was right,” James said eventually, standing up straighter and squaring his shoulders, “when I was yours.”

Thomas looked at him closely and noted the vulnerability, the great effort it had taken James to say such a thing and yet the absolute certainty with which he had said it. For a man who had been a pirate king in all but name – _the_ pirate king – to say such a thing to a man who for the last dozen years had toiled captive on a sugar cane plantation was an extraordinary thing, even taking into account that once they had been lieutenant and lord. There was no question that James’s pride was immense; his desire to give himself over to Thomas was apparently more so. Thomas shivered as he contemplated all that James offered him and all the things such a statement could lead to.

“I can be that,” James said a touch desperately, provoked by Thomas’s helpless silence. “I could be as I used to. We could be as we were.”

How could Thomas now say to James that the last thing he wanted was for James to submit to his word and his will? How could he say he sought no authority over James and never had, that he had bitterly rued the circumstances that had led them to meet on such unequal terms, in roles that did nothing but diminish the possibilities of their love? How could he possibly look James in the eye and deny him this, after James had done what had been asked of him and spoken his desire out loud?

Thomas struggled to breathe. He closed the remaining distance between them, laid a hand on James’s shoulder and blinked away tears. “I do not want a protector,” he said, doing everything he possibly could to speak tenderly. “I do not want a lieutenant or a consort or a bodyguard, a man to follow where I lead and do as I bid. I do not want to return to what we were then. I do not want Lieutenant McGraw or Captain Flint in my service.” He leaned in a little closer to ensure he would not be misunderstood. This could not be read as a rejection. It must not be. “I want James by my side, a partner to me as I am to him,” he said. “Can I have him?”

James returned Thomas’s gaze unblinking as he absorbed what had been said to him. “What is left of him you can have,” he avowed. Thomas did not miss the doubt or the disappointment in his voice, but nor did he consider that they diminished the sincerity of the response. Thomas had not handled any of this as well as he might have, and certainly James was far from having done so, but they had each handled it as well as they could, and it would have to be enough. Nothing had broken irreparably between them, and there was time now to rebuild whatever had sustained damage in this encounter. 

He laid a hand on James’s cheek and slowly traced his jaw. “In this,” he said, “I am a greedy man.”

James leaned into the touch, his eyes half-closed. “I must warn you,” he said, “I do not have much of a history when it comes to partners.”

“A second chance, then,” said Thomas. _A sacred opportunity_ , he thought and did not say.


	11. A Story is True - Day 8

“There is something I would like to speak with you about,” Thomas said as he closed the cabin door behind them. He and James had been waylaid on their way back from dinner by first Tim Larkey and then Charles Urquhart, both of whom had lingered some time in conversation. They meant well by it, and Thomas was glad that both men had decided to extend a hand of friendship to James and to do so publicly, but it was a relief all the same to close the door and finally be able to breach the topic he had been wanting to discuss all day.

“Is there,” James said wearily, setting their water jug down on the table and sitting heavily on a stool. “How very unexpected.”

James had been shelling corn for the last three days in a team with Roger Cummins and Joe Fothergill, neither of whom were known for their scintillating conversation – not that James was likely to have been eager to participate even if they were. After the first day, he had called the task meditative. After the second, he had declared it just as tedious but much less unpleasant than gutting fish. After this the third day, he had said nothing of it at all and remained surly and subdued all through dinner, which had been disturbed more than once by visitors dropping by to be introduced to the famous James McGraw or the infamous Captain Flint, not all as well-meaning as Tim or Charles had been.

“Yes,” said Thomas. “There is. How are your hands?”

James held them up in front of his face and turned them so Thomas could see first the palms, then the back. Thomas went over to him and took both hands in his own, watching James’s face carefully for any indication of pain. He would give no great sign of it, of course, but Thomas was learning how to look.

“They’re fine,” James said, long-suffering. Thomas gently probed the areas he knew would be sore and James let him, closing his eyes with a sigh. “What are we speaking about?”

“Catholic traditions and practices.”

“Jesus,” James said, opening his eyes and staring up at Thomas in some perturbation. “What for?”

“We never had a Christmas together,” Thomas said. “We have never discussed it.”

“Thomas, I am not –” James blinked and shook his head slightly. “I do not celebrate Christmas any more.”

“When did you last?”

“1714.” 

Thomas’s hands went still. “So recently?”

“I have not observed it in any religious fashion since my grandfather died,” James allowed, pulling his hands out of Thomas’s loose grip. “I am not and have never been devout, as I think you well know.” He watched Thomas and waited, and when he saw the truth dawn on Thomas he nodded and looked down at the floor.

“With Miranda,” Thomas said.

“Yeah.”

Thomas drew James to his feet and embraced him, feeling James’s arms come slowly around his sides in answer and hold tight. He had not yet fully absorbed the shock of the news James had brought him. He could still not fathom, sometimes, that she was dead.

James stepped back after a short time, regarding Thomas with sorrow and sympathy. “I brought her pirated goods and we drank rum,” he said. “She made me sing carols with her, interrogated me about my family traditions and taught me to play piquet, though I am fairly certain the rules changed dramatically from year to year. I never could best her in it, at any rate.”

Thomas remembered Miranda’s delight playing Jeu Royal de la Guerre in their crowded parlour and how gleefully she had laughed off any accusations of cheating. No one who came to their Christmas parties was ever allowed to leave without having joined her in song, and no one who sang did so without a smile on their face. Thomas had not been immune to it; James, he had hoped, would not be either. He had never had the chance to find out.

“I miss her,” James said. “I miss who I was with her.”

Tears sprang to Thomas’s eyes as all his breath left his body. “So do I.”

“I was the only one to mourn her when she died,” James said, his voice thick with grief and guilt. “No one else even noticed that she was gone. She deserved everything, and she got nothing. I gave her nothing.” He looked at Thomas, and his frown deepened. “Thomas,” he said. “Thomas.”

This time it was James who pulled Thomas into an embrace, and with James’s arms around him Thomas could finally think again, and he could finally breathe. Both thinking and breathing were painful endeavours, but the avoidance of either brought even greater peril, and so Thomas endured his pain, as he must. It was easier to bear, at least, when he was not alone in it.

“We will honour her at Christmas,” James said softly into Thomas’s ear. “We will honour her every Christmas.”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “Thank you.”

“I have needed to,” James said. “But I could not do it alone.”

* * *

James was somewhere on that ship with the black sails, sailing out to sea with a fire taking hold in its hull and the sun setting gloriously over the water behind it. Miranda stood beside Thomas as he watched, her hand resting lightly on the small of his back. Her dress was the same black as the sails of the ship. She wore no veil, and her hair fell loose over her shoulders. There was no warmth in her big brown eyes and no laughter on her lips. She stared out to sea, and Thomas could not read her. 

“You were to go with him,” he said, his voice loud and clear in the unnaturally still air. “He was not supposed to go alone.”

“You should not have asked it of me,” Miranda replied. She sounded as vexed as Thomas had ever heard her, though her expression did not change. “How could you ask it of me?”

“You were to look after one another,” Thomas said. “You were to come through this thing together. I thought –”

“I loved him, Thomas,” said Miranda, her voice reverberating in Thomas’s ears. “I really did love him, but you took choice from me when you bid me promise. You never saw him, my dear, after the blow had been struck. You did not see him broken, and you did not see the things he had to do to himself in order to return to any kind of functioning state. You did not have to watch as he built himself into a man who could survive the thing that was done to him. We were to look after each other, by your word. He could barely look after himself, and so how could he properly look after me? He left me time and time again, seeking death and unable to admit even to himself that he did so, never able to guarantee his return. He never made the promise to you that I did. He was not bound in the same way.”

“I am sorry,” Thomas said as one of the sails took fire on the ship. “I am so very sorry.”

“I thought I had escaped the curse inherent in matrimony by marrying you, who promised me freedom, only to be caught in that curse with a man who was not even my own wedded husband. In your final act as husband, you bound me to a man I loved and could not leave. But I did keep my promise to you, my dear, though you did not keep yours to me. I took care of him, as much as he would let me, and now he is returned to you.”

“I am sorry.” Thomas turned to offer her an embrace, to feel her in his arms again.

“No,” she said, stepping back from him, twenty yards away in a single motion, her eyes dark and distant. “I am gone from you now.”

So Thomas turned back to the ship. “We should have gone after him,” he said, watching the fire roar red as blood on the black sails. The sun was plunging below the horizon faster than was possible; the eerie glow of the fire was the only thing now lighting Thomas’s view.

“He will survive anything,” Miranda said from a distance away. “Burned and bleeding and drowned, he will emerge from that thing and come crawling to you. There is nothing surer.”

“I did not want him to burn.”

“Then you should have listened to me.”

When he turned to look at her again, she was gone. 

Thomas tried to wade into the water, thinking to swim to the ship, but his feet were so heavy, chained and bruised and sinking into the sand. If he drowned here, James would be doomed forever to roam the earth seeking a man dead and vanished and gone. Thomas must live, to find James and be found by him, to settle down somewhere where an oar would be taken for a shovel, but the water rose to Thomas’s waist, to his shoulders and crashed over his head, and the chains on his feet pulled him down and down and down.

A warm hand on his wet face, then, and a heavy weight on the bed beside him. A kiss on his lips and a hand through his hair and warm breath whispering on his cheek. 

Thomas’s lungs burned, and his eyes ached. There were no words in him, and James offered him none, only a quiet closeness that freed Thomas from the expectation of doing anything other than slowly drawing air into his lungs and blinking tears from his eyes. He reached for James and found first his chin and then the back of his head, unburned, unbloodied and untouched by the sea. He ran his fingers against the grain of James’s hair and then down with it, over and over, until he was himself again.

“I woke you,” he said then, moving his hand to the back of James’s neck and squeezing lightly.

“No,” said James, wiping tears from Thomas’s cheek with the back of his fingers. “I was awake.”

Thomas sniffed and wiped at his other cheek, seizing gladly on the opportunity to distance himself from his own torments by applying himself instead to James’s. “Why?”

James pulled away from Thomas and lay back down where he had been, and the foot or so between them felt like a mile to Thomas. “Dreaming,” he said.

James’s dreams were so still and so quiet as to absolutely terrify Thomas. Even ill and taken with fever, his distress had been barely perceptible. Once or twice in the nights after, lying awake, Thomas had heard James suddenly waken, with a short breath in or out, and lie still for a time. He could not begin to imagine how many times this had occurred with Thomas asleep and knowing nothing of it. 

“Your dreams are so damnably quiet,” Thomas said to him. “How am I to know when they occur?”

“You don’t need to,” said James. “I told you I would notice if you tried to avoid a conversation about yourself, Thomas. I have been noticing.”

“You used to tell me of your nightmares,” Thomas said. “Now you will not?”

“You have never told me of yours.”

“I did not have them before.”

“And now you do. So will you tell?”

There was no way for Thomas to speak of his own woes without adding to James’s. He could not explain that Miranda had spoken to him of the pain and the hardship he and James had inflicted on her, that she had voiced Thomas’s ever-growing guilt and made absolutely clear to him the wrongs that had been done to her. That burden was Thomas’s alone; to disclose it to James would be candid, but he knew it would not be fair. 

Nor could he even begin to explain the guilt that coursed through him at the part he had played in sending James down his dark and terrifying path. If James knew how the blood on his hands haunted even Thomas’s waking thoughts – James’s hands, while Thomas’s remained spotlessly clean – how could he look him in the eye again? That was not who James was now; it was not who he wanted to be. The past was the past, and it was best to let it stay there.

“Are there people here that you discuss these things with?” James asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are men you are close to here, men with whom you can speak frankly. There are men I know that you trust. Is there anybody that you speak to about the contents of your dreams?”

“No,” said Thomas. “Not for years.”

James moved back over to him then, and Thomas wrapped a grateful arm around his shoulders. The conversation was not easy, but this always was. It was never anything but easy to hold James close to him, whether Thomas’s words were flowing freely or failed him altogether. 

“I know it is not an easy thing for you that I have come here,” said James.

Thomas wanted to protest and had a denial ready on his lips, but James put a hand up to cover his mouth in such perfectly-timed anticipation Thomas could only laugh. 

“You told them of James McGraw, who stood nobly by you in your doomed moral argument,” James said. “You told them of the love we shared. That is an image long held by you, conveyed to others and now shattered by my reappearance. Do not think I do not understand such a thing.”

Thomas lifted James’s hand from his mouth and held onto it lightly. “It is not shattered,” he chided. “It is all still as real as it ever was. There is simply … more to be considered. We are not accustomed to change in this place.”

“No, I imagine not.”

“I thought I was set on a path that could not deviate, and the breadth of the world shrunk accordingly. Now it has expanded, and with growth there is always some kind of pain alongside it. It can be borne, and the reward of it is worth the cost.”

“I have lived in the dark a good long while,” James said. “Sometimes it was liberating, sometimes suffocating. If you are there, or if you are not, if you have been there or if you have not, I am ready to hear about it. I am tired of talking about myself. I am tired of thinking about myself. I want to know about you. For God’s sake, Thomas, I want to know how you are, right this moment. I need to know how you have been.”

“I know you do.”

“You hold back from me,” said James. “You consider that I need to be protected from your thoughts. I cannot begin to express the absurdity of that.”

“I will not see you hurt any more than you have been.”

“I will hurt whether you wish it or not. I will hurt until my last day on this earth. That is what I have earned for myself, and I must live with it. I would prefer not to do so alone.”

Thomas took a while to consider those words, bluntly stated and unforgiving as they were. “Yet you suffer alone when you dream and do not wake me.”

“And here you hound me about it,” James retorted. “Why am I not entitled to do the same with you?”

“I will strike a deal with you,” Thomas said, knowing himself defeated by that argument but determined to take James down with him. “I will speak to you of the contents of my dreams, of some of the things that bring me pain. When you dream and you wake distressed, or you cannot sleep due to any such thing, you will wake me. Always.”

“The agreement is not an equal one,” said James, maddeningly businesslike in his tone. “I must always wake you, you propose, if I am troubled in the night. That is a well-defined term stated absolutely. You will speak to me generally, and only of some things, as you choose. How is your compliance to be measured?”

“How is yours ever to be known?” Thomas countered. “How many dreams have you woken from in the last week that I have known nothing of? I cannot know whether you comply any more than you can judge if I have adequately done so.”

“If I give you my word, then I will do it,” said James. “But I do not give my word until I am satisfied with the arrangement.”

“On trust, then,” said Thomas, “on both sides.”

“On trust,” James said, his tone deeply sceptical.

“Do you venture that there is none between us?”

“Very well,” said James with exceptionally bad grace. “I will take it on trust.”

Thomas smiled at his victory, but it was a smile that was short-lived. Now that he was compelled by agreement to speak his thoughts aloud, he found them all the more displeasing, imbued as they were with self-pity, self-importance and a dreadful, seething guilt that only grew more powerful the more he thought on it. He dearly wished for the freedom to speak wholly and completely from the heart, but he could not bring himself to do so. Until he had mastered his own mind, his emotions and his failings, he could not inflict it all on James. 

But of course, as soon as Thomas began to speak of any of it, James would hear all the words he was not saying and understand a great deal more than Thomas intended to divulge. Thomas had never had to say a great deal when it came to James, and yet so much had been understood between them. Perhaps all that he really needed to do was begin, and James’s extraordinary mind would do the rest.

“I dream of what was done to you and to Miranda,” he said. That was what James had asked, and it was not so difficult a question to answer, on its face.

James, of course, was not satisfied by it. “And to you?” he asked.

The question was direct and unable to be evaded, so Thomas forced the words out. “And to me,” he said. “But that is of a different flavour.”

“Is it?” James asked. “How?”

Thomas considered the facts as he knew them. “I brought you into it all,” he said. “I believed my judgement infallible and disregarded advice given to me by those far wiser, and you both suffered for it far more than I. At least that which I have suffered was brought about by my own actions and not those of another.”

When James spoke, his words were quiet and simple. “I followed you because I wished to. You did not compel me.”

“You followed out of love.”

“Yes,” said James. “It is hardly your fault that I loved you. It is certainly not your fault that I decided to throw my lot in with yours. That choice was mine, and I made it freely. It was what I wanted, and I am therefore responsible for it. You are not.”

“You would have been safe, had I not pursued you.”

“You know I would not.” Thomas did not know if James spoke of the danger inherent in his choice of career or something much harder to define. “I have never been safe. Nobody ever is.”

 _I thought we were_ , Thomas wanted to say. _I have never been as clever as you thought I was. I thought that we were safe._

“If you are waiting for me to be well before you act unguardedly toward me, well, I never will be,” James said. “Not as I was. If that is what you are waiting for, your wait will be more than interminable. It will be eternal, and I will hate it eternally.”

“James,” said Thomas. “I –”

“I do not wish to have to go to the lengths with you that Silver did with me in forcing me to accept his support and his partnership. Decomposing whale carcasses are vanishingly rare inland.”

“There is a story you will have to tell me before long,” said Thomas.

“Yes,” said James. “I suppose I will.”

“I think also of myself,” Thomas confessed into the silence that followed. “I think of what I can bear to speak of and what I cannot.”

“It is truly remarkable what a man can bear if he has someone who will help him bear it,” James said. “I did not understand the degree of my own dependence on such support until I found myself bereft of it – without Miranda or Gates, without you. I thought myself alone and finally friendless, and I was lost. I was completely fucking lost.”

“I wonder that you include me in such a category,” Thomas said. “I who was dead and had been of no support to you for a great many years.”

“Yes,” said James. “But I wanted you still.”

Thomas did not know what he could say in the face of such a bleak declaration. He was here now, yes, and they were together, but that did nothing to alter the memory James now dwelled upon. It did not erase anything that he had suffered in the intervening years. Thomas sought for proper control of his voice, wanting to make his response, whatever it might be, clearly, concisely and without tremor. Before he could find that control James spoke again, in that low and fervent way he had that spoke of a growing wave that needed to crest and crash in order to find itself calm again. Thomas bit his tongue, and he listened.

“You … I have tried,” James said. “ _It is not good that he is alone_ , you said to me. _Everybody needs a partner_. You broke open a part of me that I could never fully close up again, however hard I might try. Silver saw that need, and he filled it, and in doing so he saved both my life and what remained of my sanity. He could not have done so had you not paved the way, taught me to be – he was not you, as you are not him. I felt your absence –” James’s breath caught, as it had been threatening to do for some time. Thomas felt his chest shudder. “I felt it then keenest of all.”

“My –”

“I am sorry,” James said abruptly out of the darkness.

“There is no –”

“I am sorry that we left you there.”

Thomas shook his head. His mind was still caught up in what had been said earlier, and he was ill equipped to deal with this sudden turn in the conversation. “I told you to go,” he said. “There is no apology to be made.”

“I should not have listened. Action could and should have been taken.”

“If you had –”

“Why, in this of all things, did you have to be defeatist?” James said, true anger in his voice. “The impossible is possible, but only inasmuch as you see it so. Nothing could have been done? Then why try to redeem Nassau in the first place? Why set yourself the unachievable goal? Why present your plan to parliament without compromise where compromise would surely have been accepted? Why embark on any of this in the first place, if you did not think the impossible could be achieved?”

“I never thought it was impossible to return Nassau to prosperity,” Thomas said. “If I had, I never would have attempted it.”

“But you thought it impossible –”

“You and Miranda had a chance, where I did not. All that I had left in my power was to not jeopardise that chance.”

“We all had a chance, Thomas.”

“I could not see one.”

“Because you were devastated. You were betrayed. You were not … and this is why I should not have listened to you. I should not have listened to Miranda. I should not have listened to Peter fucking Ashe when he told us you had died.”

“James,” Thomas said, and James fell silent. “Will you listen to me now?”

He heard James rub his face. He heard a quiet sniff.

“I too feel guilt,” Thomas said. “I have felt tremendous guilt. Some of it is justified; some comes from an entirely irrational place that I cannot even now argue away. You say you are tired of talking about yourself, but I have never had any skill in doing such a thing. Your capacity to know yourself and to share that knowledge with another is something that is quite beyond me. I came to know you in London better than I have ever known myself, and that is not because I have any great insight into the hearts of men. Events have proven that I do not. I came to know you because you let me. I came to love you because you let me. I marvelled then at your generosity; I am astounded that you can be so forthcoming now, even after everything that has befallen you. I wish I could reciprocate. I want to give you all that you have given me, but I do not know that I can. I do not know that I am capable of it.”

“It is only easy because you make it so,” James said. “I had no notion of ever speaking in such a way until you invited me to. Ask anyone who has known me before or since; none will speak of my openness or my generosity. Those are yours because you – because I want to be known by you. There is no explanation for it. I can be myself with you. I love you as you are. I ask only that you do not hide yourself from me.” 

Thomas shifted James’s head from his shoulder to the pillow and leaned over him, one arm to either side, not coming intimately close but close enough for his presence to be undeniable. His body so easily remembered how to do this, how to capture James’s full attention and narrow the world to just the two of them, where time stood still and everything that did not matter simply fell away. 

“I will not,” he promised. “I will not hide from you.”

“We do not always know that we are hiding,” James murmured. “We do not always know how to stop.”

“But we can learn.” Thomas lowered himself to kiss James just once, chaste and soft, before settling himself on his side, his head pillowed on one arm and the other lying loose across James’s chest.

“Miranda said to me that I could only function when fighting,” James said, finding Thomas’s hand and holding it close to him. “She said I waged war to silence the voice in my head because I could not bear to hear it.”

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, overcome by a wave of sadness. He wanted to stamp his foot like a silly little boy and demand that Miranda be returned to him as James had been. Lord Thomas Hamilton, entitled and naïve – indulged, his father had said – never satisfied with one miracle where he saw the potential for two. It was obscene and unjust that Miranda, who bore the least blame for the tragedy that had befallen her life, had suffered the steepest cost. He wanted to hold her in his arms again; he wanted to apologise for all he had done to her. He wanted to tell her what a colossal fool he had been.

“I learned to listen to it, in the end,” James said. “I learned to live with the things it said to me. You have learned something similar, I imagine, in adjusting to your position here. I only hope it did not take you as long as it did me.”

“I did not fight at all,” Thomas said. “There was nothing left to fight for.”

“And I have fought enough for ten lifetimes.”

Thomas freed his hand from James’s and moved it to his head, his fingers brushing against scar tissue all too often as they trailed along James’s scalp. James turned his head sideways to give him better access, seemingly as mesmerised as Thomas by the sensation. “Whatever possessed you to cut your hair so short?” Thomas asked, running two fingers from the base of James’s skull, up to the crown of his head and then around to the temple.

“Expedience,” James said lazily. “It’s ungrabbable.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “This is precisely my concern.”

James snorted and nudged his head even closer to Thomas; Thomas made up the distance between them and they settled together face to face, close and comfortable.

“One of the men who came to take me away reminded me uncannily of my brother,” Thomas said after a while. “He had blue eyes and freckles and long fair hair, and when he pulled me from Miranda his fingers left bruises on my arm that did not fade for a week. When I remember it, when I dream of it, sometimes I see my brother in his place.”

“They were not your father’s men who took you, then?”

“No.”

“Did you ever hear from your brothers after you were taken?”

“No.”

“Fucking pieces of –”

“I doubt they knew I was sent here,” said Thomas. “My father is not sentimental with his secrets. They will think me dead, along with the rest of the world.”

“Was not sentimental,” James said pointedly.

Thomas blinked in the darkness.

“I killed him. I hunted him down and I took his life from him, as he had taken ours from us.”

The thought came unbidden and unhesitating: _Good_. “Yes,” Thomas said. “I know.”

James’s voice was small in the deep darkness of the room. “You do?”

“The deed was attributed to Captain Flint,” Thomas said. “I came to hear of it.”

“Then you know your mother died with him.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, finally a tremor in his voice. He had not loved his mother. He had not liked his mother. He had, after he was married, come to detest her. He wondered how much of her conduct James had heard from Miranda before he had set sail with murder in his heart. “Such were the reports.”

“I do not regret it,” James said. “I cannot apologise for it.”

“I do not ask you to.”

“It consumed me to know they lived while you did not,” James said. “It was an injustice that could not be left to stand.”

“I am not at all the man I ought to be,” Thomas said. Somehow this was easy to say where the rest had been so difficult. “I love you no less for having killed my father. I have no great objection to your having killed my mother. For all that she was, I ought still to have mourned her.”

“Why?”

Now there was a question. “Filial obligation?” Thomas hazarded.

“Fuck filial obligation,” James said, the words forceful and heartfelt. “Do not waste your time mourning anyone you do not miss.”

“Well,” said Thomas, “I didn’t.”

“Good.”

There was a fine line to be walked between sympathy, approval and proper Christian values, and Thomas had very little experience in navigating it. Murder, he knew, was an act against God and an affront to, if not civilisation, then nature itself. It was an absolute moral wrong, undertaken only by the most wicked and desperate of men. Somehow, it did not seem so to him now. James had changed since Thomas had known him; so too had Thomas, since he had been discarded by the world he had known. Some changes he had been conscious of as they happened. Some, apparently, he had not. “I am sorry that you needed to do it,” he said in the end. 

“Yes,” said James. “So am I.”

“I hope it eased something of your pain.”

“It did,” James said. “Both mine and Miranda’s. She found them out, you know, and put me on their trail. I cannot take full credit for the deed, though I accept full measure of the sin. After it was done, things changed for us. We could apply ourselves totally to making something of Nassau – a productive goal where the other had been destructive. We were the better for it.”

“I wanted you to be happy,” Thomas whispered. “I would have wished you to be happy.”

“I did not want to be. I have never wanted to be, save with you.”

“That is not true.”

“I have never known how to be so, save with you.”

“Then I will see you so,” said Thomas. “I will tell you my woes, as you request, and you will wake me in the middle of the night many times over, as I request, and in this way we will be blissfully happy.”

James snorted. “You have not lost your knack for romance.”

“No indeed,” said Thomas. “And this is only the beginning.”

“Is that so?”

“It is,” Thomas promised. “I have missed courting you.”

A genuine laugh came from James then. “Are we not a fair way past that by now?”

“I had great plans for your return from Nassau,” Thomas said, his heart aching with the memory of them. “You know I am not one to abandon a plan.”

“I had only one plan for my return to London,” James said, leaning in to kiss him. “This.”

“Nonsense,” Thomas said, laughing despite himself. 

They had done this the two nights before, slowly and carefully – all hands and mouths, sweat and tears. Much as he would wish to, Thomas knew quite well that he did not have it in him to do so again, and he was absolutely certain that James was only moments from sleep, if he were to lie quiet and subdued. 

“You intended to make me governor in Nassau, at the very least,” he said. “You had plans to win over the Sea Lords.”

“No,” James insisted, kissing him again. “Only this.”

Thomas would call James a liar soon, when he was quiet and comfortable and half-asleep in Thomas’s arms and Thomas would not face any consequences for it. He certainly could not do so now, when he was being so delightfully accosted.

For now, it was best to let James have his way. 


	12. A Story is Untrue - Day 8

The innkeeper had come upstairs late on Tuesday evening, knocked on the door and asked if the two of them would not like to stay another week, his hand held out hopefully in front of him. James, who had resolved to comport himself in a way that could not possibly lead anybody to associate him with any kind of deviance or misbehaviour at all, let alone with piracy or the name of Captain Flint, had smiled not entirely coldly at him and informed him they had plans to depart at first light the next day. He had thanked the man for his consideration and then, after closing the door, fixed Thomas with a look of great patience and forbearance, seeking acknowledgement and commendation for the effort he had made.

He was trying still this morning, standing out the front of the inn in plain brown boots and breeches, a loose white shirt and plain cap. His beard was trimmed, his snapsack settled snugly along his side and the knife he had bought was settled quite inconspicuously on his hip. It was only the second time he had left their room at the inn since entering it; he was not entirely at ease, but he was far more so than he had been two or three or five days ago. His eyes turned seaward time and time again as they waited, in spite of the dazzling glare of the morning sun and even though both the harbour and the river were well and truly out of view. 

Thomas let James be and kept lookout for the boy who was going to come when Mrs Coleridge’s carriage was ready. James had suggested they walk north from Savannah, but Thomas had not wanted to commit to such a lengthy trip on foot when there was still some uncertainty about James’s physical health and both of their states of mind. Perhaps James was used to pushing on past his limits and thought nothing of doing it, but Thomas did not like to see it and would not countenance it, not when there was a viable alternative – which, against all likelihood, there was.

Two days ago, Elaine Northby had once again encountered Thomas on his morning walk, and there she had drawn from him that he and his travelling companion were soon to leave town. After expressing her great disappointment and sorrow at such a turn of events – a sentiment not shared by either her sister or her aunt – Miss Northby had mentioned to Thomas that one of the local men, William Jackson, would soon be going up to Augusta to be with his dying mother. She had suggested that Thomas and his friend might keep Mr Jackson company on his difficult journey and share the cost of the carriage. 

To nobody’s surprise, she had encountered him again the next morning, informing him with great pleasure that she had vouched for Thomas to Mrs Coleridge, the wife of Mr Jackson’s employer, who had offered her closed-top carriage to facilitate Mr Jackson’s journey to Augusta. It did not seem to matter to Miss Northby that she had spent a maximum of half an hour with Thomas in her entire life and had never once met the man he travelled with. She had taken to Thomas and so trusted him implicitly despite the misgivings of her aunt, her sister and Thomas himself. She was bored, very clearly, and desperately sought something with which she could feed her active mind, body and spirit. If nothing suitable presented itself, she would seize on something rather less suitable simply in order to be doing something. 

She had quite tearfully farewelled Thomas yesterday, bemoaning the dreadful nuisance that was her brother’s birthday and the necessity for her to remain home all morning to celebrate it. Thomas had wished her all the best and walked away feeling that he could or should be doing more for this terribly bright girl who was too passionate and too lively for the life she seemed doomed to lead, but there was, in fact, nothing he could do. He had his path to walk, and she had hers. No doubt she would flourish somewhere, somehow, so long as she could find a way to remain free.

Thomas had been free, to all intents and purposes, for a week now. This was the seventh morning he had woken outside the four walls of his cabin at the plantation, but only this morning had he woken truly feeling that freedom. The difference was, he considered, that he now had no choice but to face the fear that came along with it. _It contains within it fundamentally the freedom to starve_ , James had said, and that was certainly part of it, but it was his words a few moments later that rang in Thomas’s ears: _There is nobody in the world who expects anything of you._

To have so few ties to the world was truly uncanny. Thomas could go north. He could go south. He could go west. He could purchase passage on a ship and sail wherever his money would take him. The only person who would care or even particularly notice stood a few yards away from him at the east corner of the inn, his thoughts occupied with what Thomas thought would likely be very similar sentiments. James’s ties and obligations had been of a different nature, but he too had been abruptly severed from them and was left now to find his way afresh. His eyes returned again and again to the eastern horizon.

If they were two boys, or two young men, or even youngish men, then standing this way out the front of an inn in a burgeoning colonial town, carrying their every worldly possession and with the whole wide world at their fingertips, would signify the beginning of a grand adventure. There would be excitement in the air, and impatience for their journey to begin. The sky was blue today as far as the eye could see, and the sea air was fresh and bracing. Thomas could almost let it all blow away on the breeze and imagine a life that he and James could live, unburdened by the past.

The boy came running up to them, wheat-blond hair blowing wildly about his face and his cheeks glowing pink. “Mr Willoughby and Mr Smith,” he said between great gulps of air. “Miz Coleridge’s carriage will be by in five minutes.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said to the boy, who stood and stared at him expectantly. 

“Here,” said James, and flipped him a coin.

The boy fumbled the catch but quickly picked the coin up off the ground before sprinting off the way he had come, kicking up clouds of dust behind him.

“You talk to him, if he wishes to talk,” James said, sounding weary of the day before it had even begun. “This was your idea and I hold you responsible for it.”

“Do you think he will wish to talk? His mother is unwell, and he knows us not at all.”

James made a noncommittal noise and glanced eastward once again. His hand rested nearer the handle of his knife now than before, and his eyes began to closely track the movement of those who passed them by. He stood still as a hunting cat at rest and with the underlying energy of one. If he had a tail, it would be twitching at its tip. Where before passers-by had barely spared the two of them a glance, now their eyes lingered on James for a moment and they veered away from him a little, whether consciously or otherwise. 

“You are doing it again,” Thomas commented.

James met his eyes, exasperated. “This is how I stand.”

“And you see how people look at you?”

“Let them,” he said. “We’ll be gone from here in five minutes, never to return.”

Thomas gave James a reproachful look but said nothing. He did not see any value in repeating the same conversation they had had half a dozen times in the past two days when he knew that James remembered it perfectly well.

“I was in the Navy for nine years and aspiring to it for longer,” James said, apparently not sharing Thomas’s assessment of what was and was not worth saying. “I have been a ship’s captain for twelve. I suppose you want me to return to the way I spoke, too, when I was eleven, in aid of our disguise.”

“I should have liked to have heard that,” Thomas said.

James snorted. “Our paths would never have crossed had I not eliminated every trace of Padstow from my tongue as soon as I was able.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “I know.”

“It is gone for good,” said James, and it truly did not seem to cause him the least concern. “And this is how I stand.”

Thomas refrained from rolling his eyes and let only a quiet exasperated hiss escape his lips. James’s eyes crinkled, and he let some of the stiffness flow out of his spine and rested one hand on his belt, watching the world around him with reserved disinterest instead of alert suspicion. James did not look at Thomas, but there was no mistaking the target of his smile. “But Mr Smith stands more like this,” he said, cocksure as anything.

It was exactly as it had been before, when James had taken to arguing the difficulty of a task and resisting undertaking it purely to increase the plaudits he felt he was due when it was accomplished. He sought recognition from Thomas always of the things he was capable of doing, descended almost to showing off for him when his spirits were high. 

Thomas smiled, but he felt a shadow underneath it. This was a frustration which he had long since forgotten the sting of, this requirement for a proper distance, a proper comportment and a proper behaviour when his heart was warm and James stood so very near to him. He had nearly forgotten the weight of the eyes of others upon him and the power they could hold. He wanted to go to James now and had so quickly become accustomed to doing so whenever the thought occurred to him. They had been spoiled, this past week, by the privacy they had been afforded, and Thomas had been spoiled over years and years by the certain types of freedoms that life on the plantation had afforded him and those like him. Whatever else Mr Oglethorpe’s plantation had been, it had been a place where those parts of people that had had them expelled from wider society had been tolerated and accepted, if not wholeheartedly embraced or encouraged. Judith and Adelaide wore skirts and lived separate from the men; William Cunynghame and Mark Higgins had been permitted to cohabitate when they had wished to and had not been forced to continue doing so once they had fallen out. Allowances had been made for each individual’s preferred mode of worship. Nobody, to Thomas’s knowledge, had ever compelled Josiah Willoughby to speak. 

Thomas wondered what James’s erstwhile companions had known of him and what they had thought of him, if they had known. He wondered to what degree he had hidden, whether out of choice or out of necessity. His relationship with Miranda would have ended a lot of speculation before it began, but by the very end some must have known: Hands, Morgan and Gunn, at the very least. Thomas wondered most of all about James and John Silver. He wondered about John Silver not only knowing about Thomas and what he meant to James but also going to great pains to deliver James to him in lieu of a much more straightforward and permanent end to their alliance. He wondered how much time would need to pass before the time would be right to ask James properly about John Silver.

The carriage that came down the street a few minutes later was a much more handsome vehicle than Thomas had been expecting. It looked near to new, painted in dark blue and yellow and led by a pair of well-matched chestnuts. The driver, a grim-looking man in a brown hat and coat, nodded acknowledgement to James and Thomas from the box as he pulled up in front of the inn. James walked to him and handed up a handful of coins. The driver counted them and then nodded to the side of the carriage, so Thomas and James walked together to the door. Thomas raised a hand thoughtlessly, then stopped still as he realised he had been moving to hand James up the step. James looked at him with such fond exasperation that Thomas was tempted to turn his back on the carriage, return to the innkeeper and hand over whatever coin would be required to book that room for another night. Instead he dropped his hand back to his side, stood back as James climbed in and then followed him up the step, taking his hat off to duck through the rather small door and then settling himself next to James, opposite Mr Jackson, and closing the door behind him.

Mr Jackson was a small man, round-faced and clean-shaven, dressed in his finest clothes and plainly uncomfortable in them. “William Jackson,” he said.

“James Smith,” said James, reaching across the small gap between them to shake his hand.

“Thomas Willoughby,” Thomas said in turn, hearing himself fumble over the name and thinking how obvious it must be that it was a name new to him and not truly his own. Mr Willoughby he could bear to use as an alias; Thomas Willoughby felt like a transgression, though against whom he could not say. But Mr Jackson nodded and shook his hand, giving no indication that he had noticed anything was amiss. 

The carriage jolted slowly into motion. “Bring lunch, did you?” Mr Jackson asked, with the very definite air of a man who felt obliged to make conversation and did not have great skill in it.

“Yes,” said James, with the air of a man who quite equally resented the obligation.

Mr Jackson nodded, swallowed and looked down at the floor. James stretched his legs out a little in front of him and settled into a gentle slouch. They sat in silence through the stop-start journey through town, but as the travel became regular out on the open road Thomas thought it necessary to soften the atmosphere a little. James, he decided, would help him in it.

“Mr Jackson,” Thomas began.

“Bill will do, if you don’t mind,” Mr Jackson said. “Don’t much fancy being _Mr Jackson_ ’d for a week.”

“Bill,” said Thomas. “I would like to thank you for having us along on what is no doubt a difficult journey for you.”

“I had no choice in the thing,” Mr Jackson said drily. “Not my carriage, not my driver, not my idea.”

“Then I thank you for your forbearance.”

“He hasn’t forborne anything yet,” James commented. “Give it time.”

“In actual fact, I feel better about this with you paying your way,” Mr Jackson said to Thomas. “I’m not near so obliged to Mrs Coleridge as otherwise, so I should be thanking you for that.”

“She was lending you the carriage without charge?” James asked in disbelief.

“Aye, she was,” said Mr Jackson. “She’s in competition with Mrs Yates, you see, as to which one of them’s the better Christian. It’s been going on years now. Quite the stroke of luck for her, it was, that my mother’s taken ill.”

James chuckled, and Mr Jackson showed his teeth in a real smile. Such morbid humour still did not sit well with Thomas, even after all these years, but he had become largely inured to it from life on the plantation. He could not laugh and did not find such a comment in any way humorous, but he did not fixate on it, instead simply letting it slide by.

“You haven’t been in town long, then,” Mr Jackson continued in a much more cordial fashion, buoyed by the success of his joke.

“No,” said James.

Mr Jackson, to his credit, did not take the abruptness of the answer ill. “I’m from Charles Town, originally,” he said. “My brother’s still there. Nearly died when Flint and Vane bombarded the place, you know, but refused to leave. All the rest went to Augusta, and me to Savannah after that, but Phillip stayed put. They say things are better up there now, but they always say it with that tone, you know. They’re saying it to themselves more than me.”

“I lost someone in Charles Town,” James volunteered.

Thomas thought of the first time he had met Miranda and the conversation they had shared. He remembered how much she had laughed, how thoroughly she had enchanted him and how delighted he had been to receive the note she had written him the next day. “So did I.”

“Awful business,” Mr Jackson said, nodding sadly. “My little nephew, my sister’s boy, still has nightmares bad enough that my sister swears she’ll never take him back as long as she lives.”

“So do I,” said James after a moment. “And nor will I.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” said Mr Jackson, wincing. “You were there yourself?”

James nodded very slightly.

“I’m sorry,” said Mr Jackson. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Trying to make conversation, you know, about something other than my dying mother, and this is where I end up.”

James shook his head. “It should be remembered,” he said. “There is no benefit to pretending it did not happen.”

Mr Jackson looked at Thomas. “Were you there yourself?”

“No,” said Thomas. “I was not.”

“He’s told you about it, though.”

Thomas took the opportunity to really look at James. He did not know if this discussion of Charles Town was some sort of reconnaissance or simply an attempt at forming a bond with their fellow traveller, but it boded ill for the rest of the journey if this were to be the subject matter under discussion. James had quite intentionally chosen it, though, and seemed largely untroubled by it, so Thomas would trust that he had matters well in hand for the time being. “A little,” he said, turning back to Mr Jackson.

“Phillip doesn’t much like talking about it either,” Mr Jackson said. “He just curses the three of them: Vane, Flint, Ashe. He toasted Ashe’s death when he was still on his own deathbed, and he was recovered enough to properly celebrate Vane’s once it finally came around. So now he’s just waiting for Flint to kick the bucket, and it will all be over.” He glanced at Thomas and jumped a little, leaning back away from him. “Well, can you blame him?” he said, a touch defensively. “His hometown was devastated. His shop was blown to bits.”

Thomas attempted to school his expression, though he did not know what it had been. The thought of James dying, once it had entered his mind, had taken root and robbed him of any coherent thought – and, apparently, control of his expression.

“I heard he did die, just recently,” said James. “Some kind of petty squabble with his co-conspirators.”

Thomas gladly took his focus from James’s potential death and placed it upon the fictional death he and James had thought up between them the day before and rehearsed for as long as Thomas could bear to. There was a need for the world to know that Captain Flint was dead and gone, and who better to spread believable rumours than the man himself, with Thomas’s assistance? “I thought it an execution,” he said. “A coup.”

“Where did you hear this?” said Mr Jackson, animated and eager. “I haven’t heard anything about it.”

“The pirates who were in town last week,” said Thomas. “We were staying in the same inn.”

“And you know what pirates are like,” said James, his voice dripping with scorn. “Drunk as lords, the lot of them. They thought they were alone but did not think to properly check, and they spoke more freely than they ought.” He turned sideways in his seat to face Thomas. “The young one said they were fighting over gold. Flint had it; Silver wanted it.”

“I’ve heard something about Captain Flint and his treasure buried on a secret island,” Mr Jackson said. “Is it true?”

James scoffed and shook his head.

“It’s doubtful,” said Thomas. “It seems to be the story of Captain Kidd and his treasure retold. I do not recall them saying that the dispute was over such a simple thing as gold, but it was definitely Long John Silver who finally put an end to Flint.”

“It’s always the way, isn’t it,” Mr Jackson said wisely. “Sure, Vane came to save Flint at Charles Town, maybe those two were truly brothers like pirates are always claiming to be, but for the most part pirates is as pirates does.”

“Very true,” said James. “Pirates is as pirates does.”

“Indeed,” said Thomas.

Mr Jackson gave them a little nod and sat back contentedly. “Phillip will be over the moon.” He looked between Thomas and James like a man who now felt himself among kindred spirits – or at least one kindred spirit, that being James. “Might bring Mam a bit of comfort, too, before she goes. Assuming we get there in time to tell her, that is. Maybe little Harold will sleep better at night knowing there’s one less monster out there in the dark.”

“I doubt it,” said James.

Mr Jackson looked at him in surprise. “You doubt it?”

“Monsters do not need to be either real or alive in order to terrify. That is their power.”

“Nah, I’ll tell him a proper story,” said Mr Jackson. “I’ll tell him the ocean opened up and swallowed Flint whole, tell him God’s own angels came down and sent him straight to hell. I’ll tell him it’s over forever. That is, I’ll tell him that if it’s really true that Flint’s dead.” 

“I believe that it is,” said Thomas. “They were men who had sailed with him, and they spoke quite definitely of his end.”

“Pissed on his corpse, they said,” James added. That detail had not been part of their rehearsal; Thomas bit back his protest. “Cut the rings off his fucking fingers.”

Mr Jackson hissed approvingly. “And good fucking riddance.”

“Hear hear,” said James.

Thomas did not know how James could sit and listen to these things, let alone say all the things that he had said, but he truly did not seem affected by any of it. Thomas, on the other hand, was feeling increasingly ill.

Mr Jackson’s voice was loud now, and confident. “And if only that damn fool Ashe had gone ahead and hanged the both of them soon as he had the chance to, instead of making a whole song and dance about it, Charles Town would still be standing, and him in it alive and well, and our Harold would still be the happy young lad he was before that day.”

“Good thing Flint ran him through, then, at least,” James said. 

“Aye,” said Mr Jackson. 

There was a bitter taste in Thomas’s mouth. “I don’t see how it is.”

James nudged his ankle against Thomas’s. “Consequences,” he said simply, but his calf rested now firm against Thomas’s. Thomas told himself that James’s words were performance, neither spoken from the heart nor to be taken to heart. It did not make it any easier to hear them.

“Aye, consequences,” said Mr Jackson. “That’s it in one. And Ashe had killed his woman, after all. Flint’s as evil as they come, but if there’s one thing I can understand him doing, it’s that. Had her out on display like a fucking doll in a coffin, right in front of his eyes, did Ashe. You do that to a man’s wife, what do you think’s going to happen? I’d do the same, given the chance, and so would the both of you.”

Thomas felt himself sag even as James went rigid at his side.

“Let’s not discuss dead wives,” James growled. Mr Jackson flinched back from the look in his eyes like one would from a tiger roaring from behind bars. 

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said, gone white as chalk. Then he blanched even further. “Now, don’t hold that against me either,” he said. “My granda used to say it when I was a boy, on account of his own granda said it when he was one. I’ve not got a popish bone in my body.”

“We will not be discussing dead wives,” James said again. He put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and squeezed it gently, applying a firm pressure to keep him sitting upright.

James had been right. They should have walked. Thomas took some deep breaths to bolster himself and looked out of the window for a time. Miranda was long gone from this world, and she had always insisted to him that burial and mourning were traditions for the living, not for the dead. _It is hardly of concern to me what goes on after my death_ , she had said on their wedding night as they sat up late into the night drinking wine and discussing their future as husband and wife. She had quickly become merry, and Thomas soon after her. _I think you should do whatever brings you peace of mind. Throw me into the Thames, if you like. Burn me, as the Vikings do. I should very much like that._

When Thomas had mentioned that perhaps her mother and father would not much appreciate a Viking burial for their daughter, Miranda had laughed and waved her near-empty wine glass at him with a dismissive flourish. _They will be long dead when my time comes_ , she had said. _I will live at least to seventy simply by virtue of not bearing children. If we move to live by the seaside in our old age and war does not come to England, I’m sure I will reach eighty, if not a round hundred._

She had been only a little past forty when she died. Perhaps she had burned, in the end, but it had certainly not brought any peace of mind to anybody. Thomas remembered how she had tucked herself in under his arm where they sat on the bed, rested her head on his shoulder and fallen asleep smiling, complaining all the next day of her stiff neck and sore head but with laughter in her eyes.

“Thomas,” James said from quite startlingly close to his ear.

_You would not forgive him for Charles Town_ , James had asserted when he had first told Thomas of it. Perhaps, had the full truth of it been revealed to Thomas then, his answer might have been different. He could not fault James for his reticence regarding the darker details, but if Thomas had to learn of such things, he would wish to hear them from James’s lips and no other. Not like this, with others’ eyes upon him.

“Yes,” he said to James. “Yes, I am well.”

James sat back, his eyes haunted. Thomas offered Mr Jackson, who looked mortified, what was surely a tepid smile at best. 

“I’m so sorry,” Mr Jackson said. “Completely thoughtless of me. I’m sorry.”

Thomas nodded his acceptance of the apology but felt acutely the lack of one to James, who had actually witnessed the event and who had to carry it with him every day he lived. He did not know how James could so stoically bear the reminder of it, how he could sit and be a reassuring presence for Thomas and exhibit so little of his own pain.

“Not another word from my lips,” Mr Jackson promised firmly. “I promise you.”

“It would, perhaps, be best if we spoke of something else,” said Thomas.

“Not me,” Mr Jackson declared, shaking his head vigorously. “I’m not risking putting my foot in my mouth again. No chance. Not another peep out of me.”

Thomas cast about for an innocent topic of conversation, one which would not lead to any difficult questions or bring about any further strife, but nothing came to his mind but the phrase _a fucking doll in a coffin_ repeated over and over and over again. _Let’s not discuss dead wives_ , James had said, but Thomas wanted nothing more than to discuss Miranda, to remember her life and her spirit in a way that would, in time, overshadow the way she had died. But that could not be done, of course, in front of Mr Jackson, and so Thomas sat silently, trying not to think of _a fucking doll in a coffin, right in front of his eyes_ but unable to rid it from his mind. Mr Jackson also sat quietly, lips resolutely pressed together. At least that way he could not make the situation any worse.

That left James, though, to begin the conversation, if one was to be begun, and Thomas had no idea at all what he might say. Anything, surely, would be better than the silence they presently endured.

James leaned forward in his seat and glanced from Mr Jackson to Thomas and back again. “Let me tell you a story I have heard,” he said, his eyes gleaming in a way Thomas did not entirely trust, “about a Spaniard named Vazquez.”


	13. A Story is True - Day 13

Thomas was late coming back on Monday afternoon, having volunteered to work past the whistle when Miles had declared the field was not in a fit state to be left for the night. He had been the only volunteer, and his intention had been purely to demonstrate to those managing the plantation that he was just as selfless and accommodating now as he had been before James’s arrival, in case they held any doubts on that score. As he walked the field on his own, though, unobserved by any save Miles – and he from some distance – he had been reminded what a pleasure it could be to exist and function as a purely physical creature, to shift soil and uproot plants without reference to any social or spiritual dilemma or considering any person, time or place other than himself, here and now, as he was. When Miles had called him in and sent him along to dinner, Thomas had been a little reluctant to go. He had been closely observed for the past fortnight – by the guards, by his fellow prisoners and by James – and though the prospect of seeing James immediately set his heart beating a little faster, the rest of it he was not so eager to face. He had been accustomed to a certain amount of scrutiny in London, of course, but there, unlike here, he had been able to withdraw from the public eye as and when he wished to. 

It had also been a very long time ago.

Over the past week, some of Thomas’s acquaintances had begun to fall by the wayside. It no longer felt safe to openly discuss the _Discourses_ with Martin Lawrence, not when he was watched with more attention and more interest by the guards than ever before. He did not wish to impose himself and his changing reputation on men who he himself had encouraged to live quietly, honestly and well. As it was, no small number of men had withdrawn their friendship from Thomas. Some others who had never offered it before now made conversation with him from time to time, though they never wanted to say very much, only to make it clear that they were on good terms with him and, by extension, with James.

But he had never been approached in such number, with such clear intent, as he was now around the back of the toolshed: George Crutchley at the head of the group, George Dalton at his right elbow and John Lawrence at his left, Peter Fox hovering awkwardly behind them and William Cunynghame off to one side, offering something of a silent apology when Thomas met his eyes. Thomas did not consider he had anything to fear, this party being comprised mostly of those he would consider friends, but it was disconcerting to be so cornered and confronted after he had been so recently alone and at peace. He stowed his tools and stood ready for them with his hands behind his back, doing his best to keep dark memories at bay.

“Good evening, Thomas,” said George Crutchley. He was the most unexpressive man Thomas had ever known, and if not for the faces of the others who had come with him, Thomas would not have been able to tell that this conversation was to be of more importance than a simple greeting. “We want to talk to you about this McGraw fellow.”

“Do you indeed,” Thomas said, looking from one man to the next. “Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner.”

“Better to discuss it now,” George Dalton interjected. “We want to talk to you without him.”

“I see,” Thomas said. He nodded to George Crutchley. “Please proceed.”

“I am concerned for your welfare, Thomas,” he said plainly. “I am concerned that you are not safe with him.”

Thomas appreciated that concern and thought it genuine, but such appreciation did little to overcome the exasperation he felt at having to negotiate this. He wanted to eat his dinner, to see James again and to go back to their cabin and spend the night together.

“If you need anything, if you’re afraid,” said John Lawrence, “we are here and will help you.”

“I am not afraid,” Thomas told them. “I have nothing at all to fear.”

There was a short frustrated silence. 

“Thomas,” said George Dalton, stepping forward. “That man is not a good man.”

“By what measure?”

“By any fucking measure,” George snapped. “You’ve heard the stories. We all have. You must know that a large number of them are true, or close enough to true as to make no difference. Does he deny them?”

“I am not deceived as to his nature or his deeds,” Thomas said. George spoke from a place of hostility but also one of ignorance; Thomas should not hold the latter against him but seek to remedy it. For now, though, it was all he could do to keep his voice even and measured and to consider his words before he spoke them. “I know a great deal more of him than you do, George, I assure you,” he said. “I know what he is, and –”

“How many men has he killed, then?”

Thomas did not consider his next words in the least; they leapt from him like hounds let off the leash. “How many have you?”

George went white with anger.

“I’ll be going,” said Peter, who looked like he greatly regretted having come in the first place. “I just wanted to see you were all right, Thomas.” He hurried away, and a tense silence settled over those who remained.

“We are concerned for you, Thomas,” George Crutchley said into that silence, in exactly the same tone as he had started the conversation. Thomas did not look away from George Dalton, who still stared icily back at him, too consumed by his anger to have yet formulated a rejoinder. 

“If I may chip in here,” William said loudly from his somewhat removed position, and Thomas finally had enough reason to turn his head away. William was one of the younger prisoners on the plantation, a plain-looking lad with short brown hair, heavy brows and a strong jaw. He was a born and bred Londoner who spoke all in a rush or not at all, who had conquered his outbursts of black temper by learning to speak his mind freely and allowing nothing to fester. Thomas was inordinately fond of him; others were not as enamoured of his policy of full and frank disclosure. “I have a great affection for you, Thomas,” he said now, his words heartfelt. “I have always trusted you and held you in the highest esteem. You have done for me much more than you were obliged to and much more than any other man would have done. This is why I cannot be easy seeing you with him unless I know both of you are happy in it, and that you most of all are well. I owe you that and much more besides, and I mean no insult to you by asking.”

Before Thomas could respond, John Lawrence spoke up, his tone conciliatory but his words not particularly so. “When a man of great virtue and moral standing becomes aligned with a man with such a monstrous history, there is always cause for concern,” he said. “He has blood on his hands and his hands on you.”

William took two brisk steps forward then forced himself to a halt, though Thomas saw him seethe where he stood. “Shut the fuck up, John, or my hands will be on you in a second.”

“I have killed neither women nor children,” George Dalton said to Thomas, his voice clipped and empty. “I have sacked no cities and declared no wars.”

“We’re not talking about you any more, George,” William said. “Try to keep up.”

“He’s not going to fuck you now, Cunynghame, if he ever was. He’s got a pet fucking pirate for –”

“You’re an old man, Dalton, and I’m not going to hit you,” William said at the top of his voice, drowning out George’s words but barely audible over the sudden ringing in Thomas’s ears. “That would be beneath me.”

Thomas was no stranger to anger. It had bubbled away in him since he was a very young man. At first he had nourished it, believing that it both provided him strength and protected him from harm. He had later made efforts to move away from it, but by then his anger was so deeply a part of him that it could only be tempered and never eradicated, however much he might wish to live a life both gentle and virtuous, modelled on the great men who had done so before him. 

He had never, until this moment, felt anger so white-hot and intense that he thought he might lose his head and commit an act of violence. Anger lived in Thomas’s thoughts and, when he failed to so contain it, in his words. It was not supposed to take hold of him physically, to direct his legs to propel him forward and his fists to clench tightly in preparation for the immediate onset of violence. This was, perhaps, a taste of what James felt, what drove him to start fights in bars and put entire cities to the sword. Thomas held it back only barely, with an effort that was as close to Herculean as any he had made. If this was how James had been living his life for so many years, it was no wonder he had barely had the strength left to stand when he had finally arrived here.

“I thank you all for your concern,” Thomas said, addressing himself to all but George Dalton, who he did not yet trust himself to look at without being driven to devastatingly rash behaviour. He made no effort to remove the anger from his voice; it was all he could do to remain standing where he was and speak in anything less than a shout. “James has played with the hand he has been dealt, as have we all. I have seen his hand, and I understand how and why he has played it in the way he has. I take him as he is, in full understanding of who he is and what he has done. In time, you will come to know him, and in time you will understand who he is.”

He looked at George Crutchley, who was now standing well behind the other three, radiating a kind of stony-faced disapproval. “You know what our parting and its aftermath did to me, George,” Thomas said to him. “You have helped me continue to live after everything I lived for had been taken from me. Consider the harm those same events might have inflicted on James, whose character I have spoken of to you before. Consider what help he might need now, and how best this can be provided to him. Consider what kind of a choice it would be to deny him that.”

He looked at John Lawrence, who stood solidly between William and George Dalton, ready to intervene if intervening became necessary. John was one of the smallest men on the plantation and somewhat sickly in his constitution, but he did not seem to know it. He was overly theatrical, quite contrary-minded and thoroughly convinced of his own importance, but Thomas had found he would always listen if he was addressed with respect and in good faith. “Speak to James of his ideology and his reasoning,” Thomas said to him. “Listen to his thoughts on the world and how it should be, and consider his arguments on their merits. There is no condemning a man before first making an attempt to know him.”

Only then did he feel himself able to meet George Dalton’s eyes and keep his countenance. “Remember the forgiveness that is offered to us all, should we choose to seek it,” he said, anger rising in him once again. “Remember His mercy and His grace. Consider very carefully –”

“My dear fellows,” Wellesbury said, sticking his head around the corner. “Are you all having a picnic around here? Because this is not at all where we keep the food.”

“Just clearing up,” said William, looking at George Dalton with enormous distaste. His cheeks were still pink with anger, and his tone was heavy. “A lot of filth to be dealt with.”

“Cunynghame, please,” said Wellesbury. “You know I don’t like managing conflict. Don’t do this to me. Just go and eat.”

George Dalton marched away without a backward glance, and John trailed after him. George Crutchley and William remained. Wellesbury stood and watched the three of them expectantly.

“That’s better,” William said. “I’m feeling much cleaner already.”

“Then get on to dinner,” said Wellesbury. “Don’t lurk about like this, it’s ridiculous.”

Thomas went with William and George toward the dining hall, collecting himself as the three of them walked abreast. He was quite overwhelmingly grateful for their presence and thankful that William had stepped in when he had, letting his anger stand in for Thomas’s where Thomas’s would have brought nothing but ill.

“Gerald was my whole world,” William offered when they were about halfway there. “Even after he tired of me, I kept loving him for a good while after. I’d been besotted with him since we were boys, and I didn’t know how to stop being besotted, no matter what he did or what he said. I know what it is to be so completely enraptured by a man that I cannot see all of him.”

“I see all of him,” said Thomas, the thought of James easing his spirit with a suddenness that was as startling as it was healing. “I am enraptured because I see everything he is, not because I cannot.”

William grinned. “The enraptured part is obvious enough. Harry was there when he first came, you know. He told me all about it. Ten minutes he said you two were in each other’s arms. He said Oglethorpe himself had to step in and snap you both out of it.”

“It felt like longer,” said Thomas, his thoughts straying as the memory came back to him.

“But if anything ever goes wrong,” William said more seriously, “you know I will help you, no matter what it is you need.”

“An unconditional promise is a dangerous thing,” Thomas said.

“It certainly is,” said George, shaking his head disapprovingly. 

“Well, I have made it now,” said William. “What’s done is done. We have nothing here but loyalty to each other anyway. What could be more important than that?”

“There is a good deal that is important in any man’s life beyond personal loyalty,” George said.

“Food, friendship and philosophy,” William said. “Right, Thomas? The three Fs, just as you taught me.”

Thomas had never taught William any such thing, and William knew full well how to spell “philosophy”. Thomas let his lips curl upward, and William’s eyes shone with satisfaction.

“As long as you are not in any danger, Thomas, then I am satisfied,” said George, no hint of a smile on his face. “I will trust that your judgement is sound.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said. “And I thank you for your concern.”

George nodded solemnly.

“Come and eat with us, if you like. I expect he will still be in there.”

George shrank away a little. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I –”

“I would like to join you,” William said, the brightness in his tone covering a trace of trepidation. “If the invitation extends to me.”

“Of course,” said Thomas. Indeed, he had anticipated George would refuse the invitation and had issued it largely for William’s sake. “Of course it does.”

“Thank you, but no,” George said, falling behind Thomas and William as they approached the door. “Perhaps another time.”

There were only a few bowls left out on the front table; the room was very nearly full. Thomas looked around until he saw James sitting at a table with Ned and Tracy with his back to the wall. He had seen Thomas come in, and he certainly was not listening to Ned, who was the only one of the three talking and appeared to have been doing so for some time.

“Oh, shit,” William said when he followed Thomas’s gaze and saw who was sitting there. “Eat dinner with Ned Eames? That’s a very high price to pay for an introduction to anybody, Thomas.”

“I doubt it is one you will be required to pay,” Thomas said as they collected their meals. Surely enough, as he and William approached the table, Ned scowled and stood. Thomas had never been able to identify precisely what it was that made William and Ned so dislike each other; they simply seemed to be made out of opposing matter that repelled and disturbed the other by its very nature.

“I’m very tired,” Ned declared insincerely. “It was lovely chatting with you all.”

James made a noncommittal noise; Tracy came dangerously close to rolling his eyes.

“I bet neither of you have said anything for the last ten minutes at least,” William said as soon as Ned was out of earshot. “Not with him on a roll.”

“You’re one to talk, Cunynghame,” said Tracy. “And I mean that quite literally.”

James looked down at the table and hid most of his grin, not for decorum’s sake but because it was his own smile and not one intended for public consumption. William and Tracy did not appear to notice it; Thomas most certainly did.

“James, this is William Cunynghame,” he said as he and William sat down. James offered his hand over the table, and William shook it. “William, James McGraw,” Thomas said, as empty a formality as it was.

“Mr McGraw,” William said, his cheeks tinged pink. “I am really delighted for Thomas that you are here. I don’t claim to know you at all, but I hope I can be happy for you as well.” He looked James in the eye for a brief moment before lowering his eyes to his food.

“Thank you,” James said, giving Thomas an amused glance. “I suppose you can.”

“Believe me, they’re both very fucking happy,” Tracy said acerbically. 

William looked up at him sharply, clearly suspecting some veiled insult on Tracy’s part and not intending to let it stand. 

Tracy stared back straight-faced for a good three seconds, and then his mouth twisted into his sideways smile. “Got you there, laddie. You play easier than a drunk man’s fiddle.”

“There is no need to be perpetually in defence of me, William,” Thomas said, trying to keep the lurking amusement out of his voice. William’s intervention a few minutes ago had been necessary, and Thomas was grateful for it, but he did not wish to have it set a precedent. Thomas could manage his own affairs, by and large, and William would be best served not coming too close to any troubles that might be found in Thomas’s future.

“Well,” William said. “I don’t mind.”

“McGraw there will keelhaul me if I put a foot wrong,” said Tracy. “You can stand down.”

“In what sense does Thomas need to be defended?” James asked slowly and seriously.

William looked at Thomas with a question in his eyes, and Thomas shook his head. James would be aware there was something he was not being told, but Thomas would rather irritate him by keeping a secret than have him hear any of what George Dalton had said or anything that men like him might say in the future.

William sighed and accepted Thomas’s decision, which for him was no small sacrifice. “A slight against you and Thomas is a slight against me,” he said to James, substituting another truth for the one he had agreed to withhold. “It is not just politeness when I say I am happy for you both. I am also here after having had those sort of relations with a man, and I won’t have anything said against it, to Thomas or to anybody.”

“You won’t,” James said, the words drawn-out and bemused.

“Absolutely not.”

“I really am quite considerably outnumbered here,” Tracy observed mildly.

“You don’t have to be,” William said mischievously. “You’ve got Edward Eames the god of love waiting for you right now back in your cabin. I thought he was supposed to be irresistible. Doesn’t he say he’s irresistible? Give him a go.”

“Ned who was just here?” said James. “Ned Eames is irresistible?”

“Oh, he mustn’t have told you about Catherine yet,” William said. “If that’s the case, you are officially the luckiest man alive.”

“He has mentioned a Catherine quite a few times.”

Tracy laughed a deep, rich chuckle. “He has, very pointedly. And you haven’t asked about her even once.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a crueler man even than your reputation,” Tracy said. James saluted him lazily, his expression very near to a smirk.

“Very unusual for him not to have told you the entire story within a day of meeting you, and then three more times before the end of the week,” said William. “However did you escape that?”

“Ned might be exercising some tact,” said Thomas, “considering what our own story has been.”

“More likely he’s scared, considering what your story has been,” said William. “He’s not the bravest lad, our Ned.”

“Nor are you, to be saying all this behind his back,” said Tracy.

“I’ve said worse to his face,” William pointed out. “I’ve called him things that I still don’t know the meaning of.”

“All I’m saying is that he has very good reason not to like you.”

“Oh,” William said, a smile playing around his face. “I didn’t realise we needed a reason to despise each other. I just use it to alleviate the boredom and drudgery of a meaningless menial existence. I can’t very well imagine myself a hero if I have no villain to strive against.”

Tracy shook his head and got to his feet. “You’re worse than a child.”

“We’re kept here as children,” William said, causing Tracy to half-turn back to him. “The difference is that we tell children that things will be different when they’ve grown up. Tell me things will be different when I’ve grown up, Tracy. Convince me it’s worth trying to become a man here.”

“You came here younger than most,” Tracy allowed, “but you are not as young as that. You are well and truly a man, and you ought to behave like one.” He walked away.

William exhaled gustily and set about eating, and Thomas joined him in it.

James watched William with a thoughtful frown. “Those sort of relations with a man, is it?” he asked once William’s bowl was clear.

“Oh, yeah, there’s a few of us about,” William said. “You and Thomas, obviously. Me. Mark. Peter Fox. John Bolton. Adelaide and Judith, who can tell? There was scandal about them both, obviously, but I don’t know if that was specifically about any of their relations, or just the whole general … thing. I never thought it right to ask.”

“Adelaide and Judith,” James echoed, looking curiously Thomas. “There are women here?”

“Oh, you didn’t tell him about them yet,” William said. “I suppose he wouldn’t have come across them. You knew Judith before, didn’t you?”

“I had met her, yes,” Thomas replied. “Her brother Andrew was in my year at Eton. She was a fair few years younger, but our paths did cross once or twice.”

“I think Adelaide was married,” said William. “Embarrassing for the wife, as you can imagine.”

“Yes,” said James. “I can.”

“They are free here to live here as women without argument,” Thomas said. “A great number of accommodations have been made.”

“I have never seen them.”

“They live at the house,” William said. “They are kept quite separate to us. Judy doesn’t like it, but Mr Oglethorpe told her that if she wanted to live among the men, she must do so as a man, as anything else would be improper. I talk to her sometimes at services, or if I get to work in the kitchen yard and she’s working nearby. They don’t go out into the fields, or the mill, or the forest. I can’t imagine how lonely she must be. Judy says the servants won’t talk to her unless they’re forced to; she has Adelaide and nobody else. Adelaide, God bless her, is not the liveliest of company.”

“You seem to know her quite well.”

William shrugged. “It sounds like a joke if I say it, me being who I am, but I miss women. I do. You can’t talk to a man in the same way you can to a woman. I spent a lot of time with women, even other women by choice, like Judy and Adelaide, back when I –” he caught himself, spent a moment in consideration, then nodded. “I’m here technically out of debtors’ prison, you know. I can tell the story that way, and I usually do. My father died leaving my family in great debt for his failed business ventures and his gambling losses in trying to cover them, and for a while we kept our heads above water. Then it became too much. I was sent to Coldbath Fields, and my mother remarried. Her new husband was not inclined to see me released. Then a man came through the prison seeking men imprisoned for debt, and I came here. End of story.”

“And if you do not tell it that way?”

“It is much the same story, in essentials. The only extra detail is where I got the money from to pay the debt back for as long as I did. I was getting very good money from an exceptionally wealthy merchant to assist him with his correspondence and visit his bedchamber. His wife was sickly, you see, and he didn’t want to endanger her health by insisting on his … you know. It was a very satisfactory arrangement for all involved. His appetites were sated, his wife was free of her marital obligations and I could have paid off my father’s debt in three years with the money I was getting. Less, even, if I had become so dear to Arthur he would willingly pay it off as a gift to me.”

“Why are you telling me this?” James asked, equal parts intrigued and baffled. 

“Everyone pretty much knows it already,” William said, “and I don’t care much for secrets. If someone knows your secrets, they have power over you, so it is best not to have any. If my arrangement with Arthur hadn’t been a secret, my mother could have had no way to force it to end, but she found out about it and threatened to expose it all, to ruin him and bring shame to him for what was in truth a great kindness he showed his wife, and for his generosity to me. It was only because it had to be secret that she had the power to do that. She gave me no choice but to leave him, and then there was nothing left to hold the creditors at bay, and so we were done for, all because the world is so fucking afraid of a man who might love another man. Honest to God, I don’t understand why it terrifies them so when one man fucks another. I mean, firstly, it’s a gift from God. It’s divine, and it’s glorious. Secondly, when we’re not fucking women it just leaves more for the rest of them. If anything, they ought to be thanking us.”

Thomas had heard this type of speech from William many times, but it was James’s first, and he had passed quite quickly from curiosity into disbelief and then what seemed a mild case of shock. Thomas reached out to touch him to make sure he was all right. James shook himself and looked at Thomas, a little short of breath. “You have considerably understated the degree to which _it is of little concern_.” 

“What do you mean?” William asked, looking between them. “Understated?”

“I have lived with fishermen, with sailors and with pirates,” said James. “In the space of five minutes you have outdone them all.”

William’s mouth opened, and then his eyebrows came together in confusion. “You’re telling me sailors and pirates, out at sea for months on end without a woman in sight, don’t learn to appreciate a good bit of cock,” he said. “I highly doubt that. What the fuck were you doing all those years?”

James just stared at him, as lost for words as Thomas had ever seen him. “I was trying to bring about the downfall of the British Empire,” he answered eventually.

“Oh yeah,” said William. “That. But –”

“Pirates fuck pirates,” said James. “Sailors fuck sailors. That has always been true and always will be. They either keep it to themselves or they brag about it, but they don’t just fucking … discuss it over dinner. That I have never heard before and never thought to hear.”

Thomas reached for James’s hand. There was a hesitation, still, before James held it, but hold it he did.

“I’m so sorry,” William said, his face falling as realisation dawned. “I had no idea that – there was nobody to stop you from doing anything you wanted, I thought. I thought pirates would just … I mean, I guess I never heard that Flint was particularly – but you came back and kissed Thomas in front of everybody. You live with him now like it’s nothing, so I just thought that’s how things were.”

James looked at him sideways, a crease in his cheek and regret in his eyes. “It wasn’t.”

“Thomas will sort you out, then,” William said with forced good cheer. “He’s good like that.”

“I know he is,” said James, and the control fell away from his face for just a moment, leaving a small, helpless sadness behind it, before he wrestled it back. Thomas squeezed his hand; he managed half a smile.

“We are here for each other, anyway,” said William. “All those names I gave you, we are all here together. Never mind the rest of them, Tracy and Ned and all the rest. Some of them make do, you know, now that they’re here forever – like your pirates, I suppose, out at sea without a woman to be found – but they don’t mean it the same way we do. And plenty here still hate us, but they’re simply not allowed to get in our way. The idea is that we all get to live here as we are as long as we don’t try to stop other people from doing the same. So anyone who doesn’t like us can go choke, frankly. And not in the good way.”

“I see,” said James. 

“Right, Thomas?”

“In essence, yes,” said Thomas. “That is the case.”

James sat back in his chair and thought quietly for a time, his eyes distant. Thomas finished his dinner. William studied James with a frank curiosity that James surely must have noticed but did not acknowledge. Gradually, men made their way out of the room to go back to their cabins for the night.

“Well, here comes trouble,” William said as George Stevenson and Mark Higgins, instead of passing by their table, slowed down and approached it. George and Mark had shared a cabin ever since Mark and William had stopped doing so a little over a year ago. As far as Thomas was aware, theirs was not a romance but a fast friendship between two men who, upon being forced into close quarters with each other, had very quickly discovered how much they had in common and never looked back. They had even grown up within 50 miles of each other – George in Newmarket, Mark in Chelmsford – and over the past year had begun to talk like it, settling back into and arguing about long-abandoned dialect and local custom.

“Mr McGraw,” George said with a friendly nod, “this is my good friend Mark Higgins. Mark, this is James McGraw.”

“This is the Mark I mentioned before,” William said as James and Mark shook hands over the table. 

“You’ve been talking shit about me already?” Mark said. “Jesus, Will.”

“You’re very fucking sensitive, you know,” said William. “I was just telling … I was telling Mr –”

“James,” said James.

“I was just telling James who we can trust around here,” William said to Mark. “Yes, your name did come up. Sorry if that’s very upsetting to you.”

“Did mine?” George asked.

“No,” said William. “But please don’t take it personally. Too many fucking Georges in this place, can’t keep you all straight. Imagine if I said yes, trust George, and he went to Dalton.”

“Fair point,” said George. “No offence taken.”

“But yeah,” William said to James. “This George is certainly the best of them.”

As this conversation took place Thomas watched Mark, who was trying very hard not to stare at James but not entirely succeeding in it. He was not a handsome man nor a charming one, but he was brawny and had a vigour about him that he carried with him even when his mood was low, as it so often was. He had been a soldier, and he had been a great lover of men. Thomas had from the very beginning seen a hungriness and a loneliness in him that was painfully familiar and had only been exacerbated by his dalliance with William and then their separation. Thomas was not surprised to see him look at James with both trepidation and desire; he only hoped James would not take it ill.

“Mark,” George said. “Speak.”

Mark glowered at him. “Go fuck yourself.” Then he looked at James again, and most of the hunger was gone from his eyes. “I’ve heard a lot about you, McGraw,” he said. “I can’t believe you’ve come here.”

“Nor can I, at times,” said James. “But here I am nevertheless.”

Mark looked like he might have something more to say, but he did not say it. 

“This is the last time I introduce you to anybody,” George said. “It is not reflecting at all well on me.”

“I didn’t ask you to introduce me to anybody.”

Thomas, whose capacity for difficult conversation had been well and truly exceeded for the day, rose to his feet. James, looking relieved, followed suit. 

“It is getting late,” Thomas said. “I do not wish to linger to the point that we must be moved along.”

“God, no,” said William, jumping up quickly. “They’ve been known to rope people who stay too long in the hall into helping clean it up.”

“A terrible fate indeed,” agreed Thomas. 

They walked together to return their bowls to the side table, all five, and then made their way outside. 

“Mark, if I could have a word,” William said as they walked out into the cool, still evening. “Only for a moment.”

So James and Thomas bid the others good evening and set off for their cabin alone.

“You could have warned me about him,” James said, faintly reproachful. He shook his head. “ _Thomas will sort you out_. Jesus.”

“I fully intend to,” said Thomas.

He had spoken easily, mildly pleased with himself for both the play on words and the clear signal of intent for the night ahead of them. Twelve years ago, without the weight of all this history behind them, James would have smiled, possibly even glowed, and replied with a remark in kind. But he was bruised now, and he did not experience happiness in the way that he had used to. Now if it caught him off guard it paralysed him, bringing disbelief and tears even as it welled inside him. So he was now, struggling to hold his mouth in a straight line as they walked, his jaw tense and trembling as he came to terms with an emotion he had forgotten how to feel and a reality he had not had even a fortnight to accustom himself to. Thomas took his hand, and they walked.

“ _It’s divine, and it’s glorious_ , he says,” James said after a while.

“He is not wrong.”

“No,” said James. “He is not.”

“It does the soul good to say it aloud.”

“It gives the soul palpitations, is what it does,” James retorted. “There were at least thirty men in that room when he said all those things, and I’d wager a dozen were within hearing distance.”

“Things are different here.”

“Yes,” said James. “So I am beginning to see.”

“There are, of course, still those who take issue.”

“They can choke, I am given to understand.”

Thomas smiled. “Mr Oglethorpe’s word rules here, and he does not rule against love in any form. Outside these walls, such men might have power to intimidate, to coerce us or to bring us to ruin. Here they cannot rely on the support of any institution, participate in any tradition of persecution or wield society’s expectations to enforce what they think is right and what they think is wrong. They have to hand only their own personal power, greatly diminished in this place where they are kept prisoner, and what general agreement they can muster among the other men.”

“And it is not enough.”

“No,” said Thomas. “It is not enough. Most do not trouble themselves about such matters once they have come here. There is nothing to be achieved by it any more.”

“Because men come here and consider it their end.”

“Neither punishment nor reward are on offer, and nothing material is to be gained, and so the old threats do not work here. We live as we are, without recourse to power, privilege or reputation.”

James frowned, like an old annoyance had risen to bother him again. Then he looked at Thomas and it faded from him, replaced with something softer. “You have been here a very long time,” he said. “I have no doubt your presence has played a large role in making this place what it is today.”

“As others did before me, and with me.”

“And now this William Cunynghame, who cannot be twenty-five years old, takes it upon himself to ease my passage.”

“I believe he considers it his duty to help you, as I have helped him,” said Thomas. “He is a good man with no future ahead of him, so he does what he can for others.”

“You taught him that?”

“I did not teach him. I helped him find a path he was already looking for.”

“You have helped build this place,” James said. “I see you everywhere in it. I see you in how men behave toward me. I see your kindness in the kindness that is shown to me. I see respect for you in the respect with which I am treated, respect which I have by no means earned and am certainly not owed.”

Thomas stopped at the door, took James’s chin in his hand and kissed him, as he had not done in public since that very first day. James’s instinct was definitely still to conceal and dissimulate; Thomas did intend to remedy that as soon as may be.

James rubbed a hand over his head. “It is absurd,” he said, looking around them. “This whole place is absurd.”

“I have been here so long it no longer seems so,” said Thomas, opening the door and gesturing for James to go in before him.

“Believe me,” said James, doing as he was bid. “It is.”


	14. A Story is Untrue - Day 13

“It is probably better this way,” Thomas said, reaching his hand out to take the snapsack and watching Mrs Coleridge’s carriage grow smaller and smaller as it left them in its wake.

James arranged the bag against his own side, pointedly ignoring Thomas’s offer to carry it. “We had paid our way,” he said sharply, glaring after the carriage.

“Did you really want to meet his family? To give your condolences to him and his dying mother?”

“It’s hardly the point,” said James. “We had paid our way through to Augusta. He could just as easily have walked, if he was so desperately unwilling to be associated with us.”

Thomas sighed and set off down the road. It was quite a cool day today, and Thomas was rather looking forward to stretching his legs after spending the greater part of six days cooped up in a carriage with an increasingly perturbed Mr Jackson.

James, so it transpired, was quite startlingly good at the various kinds of subterfuge that had been required during the journey; Thomas found himself to be far less so. He did not know how to look at James as though he were an acquaintance, a friend or even a brother, when that was so far from what he really was. What he saw were strong hands with gentle fingers, broad shoulders that bore the weight of the world upon them, keen and guarded intelligence in eyes that gleamed in the sun, hair that had grown just enough over the past fortnight that Thomas was beginning to see the true colour in it once more, a scratchy beard that Thomas had barely yet had the chance to touch, and a mouth that Thomas once had worshipped and soon would again. He did not know how to stop seeing those things. He did not want to stop seeing them. Mr Jackson could go to the devil. 

When James caught up to Thomas, he put one hand up between Thomas’s shoulder blades and looked him in the eye as they walked in step. “I did not say I was not glad to be rid of him,” he said, before removing his hand. Thomas smiled, and it was a relief to be able to do so fully without fear of it being observed and judged by strangers.

James’s own lips curled upwards, and a certain light grew in his eyes.

“A private room tonight, I hope,” said Thomas.

That comment took the words right out of James’s mouth, along with every ounce of his self-consciousness. He looked at Thomas with a dazed and simple longing, and Thomas was reminded once again that it had not been even a fortnight for him since Thomas had, in effect, returned from the dead. Everything in Thomas’s life had been overturned with James’s appearance at the plantation and the revelations that had followed it, but the simple fact of James being alive had not played a part in that upheaval. Thomas could not begin to imagine what James had experienced that day or how the impact of that moment would resonate now and into the future. James had thought Thomas dead for twelve years; now that he knew otherwise, the question remained what was to be done with the ghost of the wound he had carried for all that time.

A private room, yes, with no expense spared. The thought made Thomas lightheaded; he did not know how he had waited this long. But there was an hour’s walk still until they reached Augusta, and more time after that to secure accommodation, and Thomas fully intended to move slowly and carefully once they were alone. The immediate danger he had sensed in that first week had long since passed, and any air of fragility between them had abated, but the profundity and sensitivity of the situation still impressed itself powerfully upon him. He would take care as he had never taken care before. James would be safe and James would be loved, and Thomas would do everything in his power to demonstrate that he was well and truly alive. 

Thomas exhaled heavily, took in the flat green countryside and willed his heart to slow and his head to clear. A lone man on horseback trotted southward, tipping his hat as he passed them. James walked quietly beside Thomas. His eyes were on the road now, his expression and his posture contained. His hat cast a shadow over his face; Thomas wanted to take it off and see him fully. He looked away again instead, counting the trees as they passed them.

He had counted sixty-seven when James next spoke. “Are we still Thomas Willoughby and James Smith when we reach Augusta?” he asked. “Will that be who we are from this point?”

“What is the alternative?”

“To change again,” said James. “To leave less of a trail for others to follow.”

“I have lived the life of a man who does not exist for twelve full years,” Thomas said. “I would prefer not to do so indefinitely.”

James was silent for a good ten paces then spoke reluctantly. “Thomas Hamilton must never make a return,” he said. “There are enough who know our story that it is too great a risk to take.”

Thomas had realised it and accepted it the very first time he had named himself Willoughby in Savannah town. “I hold no great affection for my father’s name,” he said, “but I do not wish to go through life without any name at all, a phantom to be never known and always changing.”

“Thomas Willoughby, then?” James said with both distaste and resignation in his voice.

“I was thinking of Barlow,” Thomas admitted.

James audibly exhaled and turned his head away, looking over the countryside himself as they walked.

“Would you mind it?”

James did not answer for a long while. A cart laden with a dozen barrels passed them into town, and a carriage carrying six passengers came by the other way. Once the road was clear again and there was quiet, James stopped and stood at attention to Thomas. “I had been thinking the same.”

The emotion that came over Thomas then was difficult to identify. The longer he stood there facing James and thinking of Miranda, the less he knew how he felt. 

“We cannot both do it,” James pointed out practically, a touch of wry humour in his tone. “It would defy explanation if we were both named Barlow.”

“Would it?” Thomas asked him. “I do not see why. We can simply inform anyone who enquires that both of us have been married to the same woman.”

After one moment of mute incomprehension, James laughed from deep in his chest, his smile dazzling and his shoulders shaking. He stopped laughing and eyed Thomas for a moment, his lips parted as though he would speak, and then the laughter took him again. This was all Thomas needed to sustain him in this life. Happiness spread through him like a sunrise as James’s laughter rang in his ears. 

James was still chuckling as he turned and began walking again, shooting amused looks at Thomas as he walked. Thomas felt stronger, taller and more whole as he strolled along beside him. “You should use it,” James said, and his voice was moderately serious but still light, the words coming easily. “I am in far more danger of being recognised, and I am publicly associated with the name as you are not. If one of us is to take her name, it is better for it to be you.”

“Thomas Barlow,” said Thomas. It jarred in his ears far more than Willoughby had. At least Willoughby, for all its strangeness, shared Hamilton’s cadence and its length. “Do you know why she chose that name?”

“No,” said James. He glanced at Thomas, saw the surprise on his face, nodded and continued. “It was difficult to talk, in those early days. Once enough time had gone by, it had simply become her name, as Flint had become mine. I no longer thought twice about it.”

“What do you think?” Thomas asked. “Thomas Barlow?”

“Thomas Barlow,” James dutifully repeated, sounding the syllables out slowly. “Thomas Barlow.”

“Mr Barlow,” said Thomas. “My name is Mr Thomas Barlow.”

“My good friend Tom Barlow,” said James a little acidly.

“Please,” said Thomas. “No.”

James did not argue, which was just as well; Thomas did not want to have to threaten him with Jim.

“I know that you believe that we are all one unified and indivisible being for all of our lives, changes of name and behaviour be damned,” said James. “You say the name maketh not the man, and I can see the force in the argument. I think, for all that, you will find it easier to move forward from this point as Mr Barlow. Willoughby is too near to Hamilton.”

“I agree,” said Thomas. “And Willoughby, too, is a name I took without permission from a man still living.”

“Barlow, then,” said James. 

“Barlow,” said Thomas. _Lady Miranda Hamilton_ , Miranda had said grandly, as though announcing herself to a room. Then she had smiled at Thomas, and her smile had been droll but also quite genuinely pleased. _Goodness gracious. That’s me now, isn’t it._ “And Smith is not too near to Flint for you?”

James looked at Thomas in a manner that was frankly roguish. “I have used the name before,” he said.

“Ah,” said Thomas. “Disguises within disguises.”

“Something like that.”

They walked for some time without speaking.

“Who will they be, then?” Thomas asked.

“Hm?”

“James Smith and Thomas Barlow,” said Thomas. “Who are they?”

“You mean ‘we’, of course,” James said snidely. When Thomas glared at him, he raised his eyebrows as though he were being hard done by. “I remember you telling me quite emphatically that I have remained myself through all my misdeeds and that I must own every one of my actions whatever names I have gone by,” he said. “If this is the case, then James Smith and Thomas Barlow are not ‘they’ but ‘we’.”

“I understood your meaning quite clearly,” said Thomas. “It was your delivery of the point that left something to be desired.”

James shrugged then grinned in appreciation of his own cleverness. “James Smith has no manners to speak of,” he said. “He is quite the lout.”

“You are incorrigible,” said Thomas.

James’s smile widened, and in it Thomas saw an echo of his earlier laughter. “I should certainly hope so.”

“Hoy!” someone yelled from a cart that was approaching from behind. “Got room for two in the back, if you want a ride in?”

“No,” Thomas called out, waving him on. “Thank you.” He waited until the cart was well ahead of them before returning to what he had been trying to say before James had decided to cavil with his choice of words. “We will run out of money in time,” he said. “You have said to me that England is due a reckoning. You said that Captain Flint’s work was yet unfinished. I recall a list of ideas of how you thought that work might be progressed.”

“I remember.”

“So what are we to do from here?”

James’s brow wrinkled as he pondered the question. “What would you have us do?”

“I would have you make an answer to my question.”

Thomas quite comfortably watched James think, now that he could do so without needing to disguise it.

“I have tried it my way,” James said bluntly. “I have failed.”

“And it has cost you,” said Thomas. “I cannot begin to understand what it has cost you, and I will not have you pay that sort of cost again. I will not have it.”

At those words a great emotion came over James. Thomas saw his chest heave, his jaw slacken and his eyes turn skyward, but at no point did his steps falter. He walked on beside Thomas and slowly calmed himself, not looking back Thomas’s way until he was once again composed.

“This does not work with no threat of violence behind it,” he said, his voice thick but his words even. “The terror of the pirates and the fear of slaves rising from their chains was the only power we ever had over them. The only reason I could walk into that plantation with three men and take you out of there is because of the years and years I spent building the reputation and the legend of Captain Flint. The only reason Silver could ever have known you were there in the first place is because he had become a giant among pirates by standing in my shadow, nearer and nearer, until his name became synonymous with mine. The name of Long John Silver, relayed by a third party at that, was enough to cow your Mr Oglethorpe into revealing your presence on his plantation against his stated policy and his own better judgement. That is power, and without it we two could not be here as we are today.”

He paused then. Thomas could tell this was not the end of what he had to say and so remained silent.

“There is no manoeuvring a city, a colony or an empire without a show of force and a demonstrated willingness to use it,” James continued. “I created Flint because I knew that I would need him if I was ever to be able to change a goddamn thing. I did not have Parliament. I did not have the Admiralty. I had rage and I had a clarity of vision, and I did what needed to be done to achieve that which I was determined to achieve. If there is to be no resumption of hostilities toward England, if Flint is to be buried here and never spoken of again, then the plan will need to be radically different from anything I have done before. For that I need you.”

“ _If_ Flint is to be buried here?”

“You said you believe he is a part of me that cannot be removed,” said James. “I can only assume you said it because you believe it to be true.”

“The legend surrounding Flint is not the truth of him,” Thomas said. “That is a far more meaningful distinction to draw than the one between Flint and McGraw. Captain Flint, terror of the seas, is retired, or dead, or both. He may be buried and never spoken of again. James Flint lives and breathes and walks beside me.”

James’s lip curled. “There is no James Flint, any more than there ever was a Captain McGraw.”

“Your first name was ‘Captain’, was it? That is what Miranda called you all those years?” 

James scowled. “I take your point.”

“And yet the original question remains,” said Thomas.

James took his hat off, scratched his scalp and replaced the hat. “I knew a man,” he said, “and I knew him only as Mr Scott. He was right-hand man to the Guthries, Richard and Eleanor both, having been a slave to the family since he was a boy. From his position, he secretly provisioned and protected an entire Maroon settlement. He had sent his wife and daughter there, claiming that they had died in the Rosario raids. He did this for well over a decade, a king among his people while he quietly served Nassau, and not one white man or white woman in the entire West Indies ever had an inkling of it. I did not know of it myself until he lay before me dying, and I never would have learned of it had the _Walrus_ not made landfall, purely by chance, on the island where they had built their settlement, at a time not long before he too would arrive there.”

“An extraordinary man,” Thomas said, but the admiration he felt at hearing of such accomplishments was overshadowed by sorrow and regret that he could never meet this man, that he could not speak to him or work with him and that he had wasted so many years of his life as someone who did not exist and could do nothing at all to leave his mark on the world. 

“One of the most extraordinary I have known,” said James. 

“And he is one you think we can emulate?”

“I think the slaves are the key,” James said. “There is no clearer indication that the British Empire is a rotten one than its growing practice of slavery, and it ships potential resistance fighters into its harbours in their hundreds by the week. The war was never so winnable as when freed slaves and Maroons played the largest role in it. They are the key.”

“Your connection to the Maroons –”

“Is lost,” James said. “Yes.”

Thomas contemplated the magnitude of the task ahead of them. He was for a long moment caught between admiration of that which James had himself achieved and abhorrence of the means by which he had achieved it. As James had said, he had not had Parliament and he had not had the Admiralty. Mr Scott, so he said, had been a slave and become a king. Both had been resolute and resourceful and had built what they set out to build with the tools that were available to them. Thomas had had so much more to work with, what now seemed to be inconceivable amounts of wealth at his fingertips, and what had he achieved with it? His fall had unleashed James and his will upon the world, and that was all.

More shameful yet to Thomas was that he had fought tooth and nail to pardon the pirates of New Province Island, made every moral, political and pragmatic argument under the sun in support of that ideal, sacrificed himself and his loved ones on its altar and yet had remained silent on those whose labour powered the entire West Indies. He had not approved of slavery, had argued against it in principle among friends and peers, but he had made no true stand against it, not with all the courage of his convictions. He had accepted it as a necessary evil; he had not seen any way England could prosper in the New World without it. Now he had an inkling, the barest understanding of what it truly meant, and he knew himself for both a fool and a hypocrite of the very worst kind.

James had said he needed Thomas, but in such circumstances it was difficult to know what exactly Thomas had to offer him. On each and every conceivable measure he had failed, and it had fallen to James and Miranda, Mr Scott and his family, Woodes Rogers, even Charles Vane, whom Thomas had heard spoken of in almost as dreadful terms as he had Captain Flint, to do what needed to be done in pursuit of a better world.

“What are you thinking?” James asked.

James had said he needed Thomas, and so Thomas, whatever doubts he might have on that score, could only apply his mind to the problem. His self-pity was of no use to James and of even less use to Thomas himself. “There will be others, I should think,” he said. “There will be free men and women who wish to see an end to slavery in the New World.”

“It is a matter of finding those who are also prepared to act,” said James. “Those will be much fewer in number.”

That Thomas did not need to be told. Peter, Miranda and James it had been in the end, out of dozens and dozens who had spoken fair to Thomas and given him hope. “But those few are there to be found,” he said, not wishing to reflect overlong on past defeats. He had learned his lesson and need not continue to dwell on it.

Three men passed them on horseback, bareheaded and riding toward the town at great speed. 

“We will also need to decide how we are going to travel,” James said as he watched them ride off into the distance. “Much as I can appreciate a good walk, if we plan to go much further north we will need to travel a fair bit faster.”

“I have not ridden a horse in fifteen years,” said Thomas. “I was never particularly good at it in the first place.”

“I don’t suppose you’d approve of us becoming highwaymen for a short time?” James asked in faint hope.

“No,” said Thomas. “I would not.”

James clicked his tongue in his mouth. “Shame,” he said. “I’m really not sure how else we can make money, and it does disappear rather quickly once you start spending it.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “That is a concern.” 

“It would not be wise to take too many private rooms along the way.”

That was something Thomas had not specifically considered, and it was of grave concern to him. “I dare say one cannot buy a house with thirty-five Spanish dollars and twelve British pounds.”

James glanced at him wryly. “One could,” he said. “But one might do better to rent when one’s future is indeterminate.”

“Really?” said Thomas. “We could buy one?”

“It depends, I suppose, on your definition of ‘house’ and how much money you wish to have remaining after the purchase.”

“I see.”

“You really have never thought in this way about money before, have you?”

Thomas tried to think of a way to answer that question that was both honest and reflected well on him. He was not sure that there was one. “Not in such fine detail.”

“Not in such small amounts,” James translated mercilessly.

“Not in such small amounts,” Thomas agreed. “And how long has it been since you have done so?”

“Seventh of June 1706,” said James promptly, “ _San Esteban,_ total profit nine hundred and fifty pieces of eight. Twenty-eighth of September 1706, _Horatio_ , eight hundred pieces. Third of October 1706, _York,_ fourteen hundred pieces. That’s forty-five pieces a share, give or take, two full shares going to the captain. Not since then have I thought of money in such small amounts.”

“Your men earned forty-five pieces of eight each in the space of four months?”

“They did.”

“The economic argument for going on the account is a strong one, then.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you,” said James. “But there was a man on my crew, a decently competent rigger, who spent a hundred pieces in Nassau’s brothel on his first night ashore and then complained of Mr Gates’s indolence for not having converted the prize into gold overnight so he could settle his account and go again.” He grinned at the look on Thomas’s face. “So you see what I was dealing with.”

Thomas did, though he rather wished that he did not. “Goodness,” he said weakly.

“The things to which we become accustomed,” James said with a kind of theatrical gloom.

“One hundred pieces of eight?” Thomas asked, just to be sure he had heard it correctly. “What on earth –”

“Do you truly want to ask that question?”

Thomas thought of some of the reasons he had heard why men spent exorbitant amounts of money in such establishments in London. “No,” he said. “No, I suppose not.”

They walked on quietly for perhaps a mile. Thomas was impatient to reach Augusta, it was true, and had been consciously preventing himself from walking any faster than the pace James was setting, but he did not think it was his imagination that that pace was noticeably slower now than it had been to begin with. He observed James as best he could in the periphery of his vision, with only the occasional sideways glance, looking for signs of reluctance or illness that might explain his flagging footsteps.

“You are not subtle,” said James after a short while. “What is it?”

There was nothing for it then but to simply ask. “How are you feeling?”

James looked at him in some perturbation. “What kind of a question is that?”

“One I intend to continue asking until it is answered,” Thomas informed him. 

“ _You_ are incorrigible,” James grumbled.

“You are avoiding the question.”

“Yes,” said James. “I am.”

“Then we seem to be at an impasse.”

“We do.”

Another cart went by, carrying crates in the back along with two men wearing straw hats, who seemed to be asleep. Thomas eyed James’s hand and did not dare to hold it in his as they walked. “We can rest a moment,” he said. “If you are weary.”

James glanced skyward again, exhaling heavily. “No need,” he said, and began to lengthen his strides.

Thomas matched him easily. “I will ask my question again this evening, once we are settled in.”

“I thought you had something else in mind for tonight.”

“I am a man of many talents,” Thomas said, “capable of doing first one thing and then another.”

James snorted. Thomas looked at the vanishing cart ahead of them and then turned to check behind. There was one horseman in the far distance, not riding at any great speed. He reached out to take James’s hand, leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. James stopped in place, turned Thomas with one palm by the side of his head and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

“Well then,” Thomas said once they had parted, his lips tingling and his chest afire.

“Well then,” James said with a grin that was all teeth.

Thomas let go of James’s hand, thinking of the rider who would be passing them before long. “Until this evening,” he said.

James began walking again, his steps brisk and purposeful. Thomas smiled to himself and hurried to catch up.


	15. A Story is True - Day 21

The first Thomas knew of David Mortimer being in the cabin was a muffled yell from the doorway and an empty space in the bed beside him. By dim moonlight he saw them, David in white and James behind him in nothing at all, compressing David’s throat with the crook of his elbow and covering his mouth firmly with the other hand. David stood stock-still and terrified, his arms tense by his side. The top of his head barely reached James’s chin; he had not half of James’s bulk or a quarter of his strength. James could have snapped him like a twig, had he a mind to.

“David,” Thomas said, sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes. “This was not wise.”

“This is David Mortimer?” James said with weary disgust. Then he tightened his arm and growled, “I was not talking to you. You move, and you’re going to wish you hadn’t.”

“Let him go, James,” Thomas said, searching through the bedclothes for his drawers. “He does not pose any danger.”

“His very presence is a danger,” James said, not loosening his grip in the least. “He jeopardises all three of us by being here, and more besides.”

“He cannot leave unless you let him go.”

“If you’re saying I should throw him out the door,” said James, “then I completely agree.”

Thomas put on his drawers in silence, as that comment did not merit any response. Once he had done so, he got up and approached the two of them. When he had come within arm’s reach, James uncovered David’s mouth and shifted his hold from his neck to across his chest, not moving away from him or decreasing his vigilance in the slightest. Seeing him this close, Thomas knew that his aggression was not all for show; equally, he saw that his temper was well in hand. 

So Thomas looked to David, who he had not seen in three weeks and had hoped to encounter in much more favourable circumstances than these. Lit only by moonlight, David’s eyes were sunken and dark in a ghostly pale face. His dark hair had grown longer than was usually permitted, hanging down limp over his forehead, but his jaw still had a boy’s smoothness. He was far, far too young for this place. Thomas heard his short, frantic breaths, saw his shoulders shake and wished James had not been the only one to have noticed his entrance and sought to act upon it. David did not tend to listen to things he did not wish to hear, but it had always been Thomas’s practice to treat him kindly, to offer reasoned advice and an alternative mode of discourse to the violence that inevitably answered David’s defiance of the guards. 

By no means, though, could Thomas be understood to endorse or encourage this kind of venture and risk its being repeated in the future. James’s message, though delivered more harshly than Thomas would like, needed to be reinforced clearly and decisively if it was going to become an exception to David’s customary disregard for anything he was told that he did not like.

“There is nothing to be gained from you coming here,” Thomas said, not as criticism or censure but as a plain immutable fact. 

David’s eyes narrowed as they glared up at him. “Why are they so determined to keep me away from you if there is nothing to be gained from our meeting?” he asked, sounding every inch the entitled young aristocrat despite the great indignity of his situation and the fear that was still plain on his face. “They watch me like I am that old Roger Mortimer and a kingdom is in the balance.”

“The difference is one only of scale, not of substance.”

“Roger Mortimer did not escape the Tower a second time,” James added ominously. 

David edged a little away from James, and James let him go. He then sidled away further so that the three of them stood in a ring, with David closest to the door. He glanced at James and his eyes flickered downwards; he quickly turned his head away. His tone was strained and far less imperious when he said, “Can you please put on some –” 

“No,” said James, crossing his arms over his chest. 

David gulped. “Right. Well –”

“You’re more than welcome to leave. Now.”

David set his jaw and looked James in the eye. “I intend to leave this place altogether,” he proclaimed. “I don’t believe they can hold us all, if we decide to go.”

“I know,” said James. “You’ve wasted your one escape if that’s all you wanted to say.”

“You know? What do you mean, you know? What do you know?”

“Before I had been here a week, I knew that you intended to leave this place. Every man and his dog knows that you intend to leave this place. You have hardly made a secret of it.”

“Why do you not intend to do the same? Why would you come here in the first place, and how can you possibly stay?”

“It’s not difficult,” James said. “There’s a great big wall to keep us in. I imagine you’ve seen it.”

“You’re Captain Flint,” David insisted. “You have to be planning an escape. I want to be part of it.”

“If I were Captain Flint, your corpse would already be growing cold on my floor,” James said. “Be thankful I am not.”

David looked sidelong at Thomas then back toward James. “It would not be the worst way to end this,” he said darkly.

Thomas said, “David,” but David cut across him as soon as he began to speak.

“I thought you were my friend, Thomas,” he said. “You made promises to me. You promised you would help me, and I believed that you would.”

“I want to,” said Thomas. “I intend to. But I have never promised to help you escape.”

“Yeah, because you love it here so much,” David said, bitterness flooding his words. “Your stupid Marcus Aurelius and his stupid fucking ideas. Easy enough for an Emperor of Rome to say that a man should embrace his fate and not be dissatisfied with it. If I were Emperor of Rome, I’d embrace my fate too. He had everything he could possibly want, and apparently so do you. We’re not all so lucky, Thomas. We’re not all so fucking selfish as that.”

“Now I can throw him out,” James said. “Right?”

“Fuck you,” said David, speaking right over the top of Thomas’s firm “no”, so carried away by his anger that he forgot his fear. “You’ll free slaves and you’ll lead pirates to destroy an empire, but you won’t lift a finger for your own freedom, or his freedom, or mine. I know by now you’ve heard some of the pathetic reasons men have been locked up here. Thomas accepts it because he’s been here God knows how long and he’s so clever that he thinks it must be good if he has come to like it. He can talk himself into anything that suits him, but he cannot talk me into accepting my fate here. It is _weak_ to accept a fate that is unjust and even weaker to urge others to do so just to protect one’s own convenience. You did not accept your fate when you were sent away from England forever, because you knew that disgrace was not merited. I do not accept mine now. I will never accept it, however long they may hold me here, whatever emperors Thomas might call on to try to convince me.”

“All right,” said James mildly. “What’s your plan?”

Thomas’s surprise at such an about-face was nothing to David’s. “My plan?” he said, his voice so high it nearly squeaked. “What – what do you mean by that?”

“If you do not accept this as your fate, that means you have something else in mind for it,” James said. “What is your plan to bring that about?”

David stood upright, squaring his narrow shoulders and speaking as deep in pitch as he was physically capable, with what dignity he had left to muster. “I will go to Williamsburg and deal my father the death he deserves.”

“That is not a plan,” James said dismissively. “Anger, however righteous, will get you nowhere if you cannot apply your mind to the logistics of your problem. Do not waste my time with a child’s petulance.”

“It is not a child’s petulance,” said David. “I am seventeen and a man.”

James laughed at him, choked-off and quiet. “You have no experience in this,” he said. “You seek escape and then vengeance; that much is clear. But you cannot have your vengeance until you have made your escape, and you are too fixed on the former to spare a thought for the step that must come first. You will wear yourself out this way and achieve nothing by it.”

To Thomas’s concern, David was beginning to nod as he listened, focused and intent. If James was trying to dissuade David from his avowed path, he was not doing it by any method Thomas could recognise. 

“I will do whatever I must,” David declared.

James nodded. “I will tell you, then, what you must do,” he said briskly. “Listen to me carefully. Stop posturing and begin planning. Accept that your time here will be longer than you wish it to be, and do not squander that time by inviting suspicion and inflicting harm on yourself. Remember that escape from this plantation is but one small step in a much larger plan you must devote your mind to. See to it that the pieces are all in place before you reveal your opening move or even intimate that you have one. Chief of all, do not be so utterly foolish as to come here again and jeopardise us all. I have no interest in collaborating with children who cannot see past their own noses.”

“But you would be interested in collaborating with a man who saw clearly and thought carefully.”

“Not really,” said James. “You have come uninvited into my home and refused to leave it when asked. You have insulted both me and Thomas, wasted our time and robbed us of rest. There is a great deal more that I must be convinced of before I would ever wish to see you again in any circumstance whatsoever.”

David stood quietly for a moment then looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the joined cots, the table and stools, the fireplace. “Not a month ago, this was my home.”

“Then when you are caught coming back from here, you can tell the guards you were confused and delirious and thought it still was,” James said, entirely unsympathetic. “It is long past time you left.”

David started to move toward the door then paused, brushing his hair away from his eyes and looking back at James. “You can call yourself Captain Flint or Mr McGraw or insist on being just James all you like,” he said. “They think you’re trouble no matter what you do. I hear what they say about you. They will not stop watching you just because you play the model prisoner.”

“Then why the fuck are you not leaving?”

David’s eyes slid to Thomas. “I am sorry that I called you weak.”

“You are not,” Thomas said. “Let’s not lie to one another.”

“I will throw you out if you linger one second longer,” James said. 

David lingered. “So do you –”

James started toward him and he quickly let himself out, leaving the door open behind him and vanishing into the night.

“Fucking hell,” James said, closing the door firmly. “I thought he was supposed to be under watch.”

“I thought you were going to wake me in the night.”

“And so I have done a dozen times since I made that promise,” James said, clearly of the opinion that Thomas’s comment had been more than a little absurd. “That boy is not a nightmare, not in the strictest sense of the word. I’ll grant you he is difficult enough to banish as to warrant the comparison.”

“You did not need to so accost him.”

“I did, and I will continue to do so,” James said, walking back to their bed as calmly as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred. “I am not in the habit of disregarding threats to my person, and I certainly do not intend to disregard threats to yours. You can be assured of that.”

“You will not have banished him permanently,” Thomas said as they settled in together side by side, Thomas’s arm around James’s shoulders.

“He will be quiet for a time after what I have said to him. He knows he must win my approval on the next occasion we meet, and he will not come again until he is confident he can do so.”

“That is if he believes you will be of help to him.”

“He believes it,” James said with easy confidence. “He needs to believe it because he is at his wit’s end. He takes your goodwill toward him, along with my supposed capacity to bring this place to ruin, and he sees there everything he needs. He sees it nowhere else but in us.”

“And now you have nourished that hope.”

“It is better to have him in hand than out of it,” said James. “Do you know what drives him to seek vengeance on his father?”

“Yes, but I cannot tell you,” said Thomas. “I promised him I would not tell a soul.”

“But I have no soul, you see.” 

“Nonsense,” said Thomas, not amused in the slightest. He propped himself up on his elbow, leaned over and kissed James, feeling him smile as he did. “I will not have you saying such things.”

“And yet you reward me for it.”

“I do not,” Thomas said, kissing him again. “I do this with reference only to my own pleasure. I do not think of you at all.”

James laughed as he returned the kiss. “How unfortunate for me.”

Thomas desisted after a little while, sleepy and comfortable. He put his arm back around James and encouraged his head onto Thomas’s shoulder – a prospect met with not the least bit of resistance.

“Is there no one else who can subdue him?”

Thomas’s spirits fell at the reminder of what had occurred, and his heart grew heavy once more. “The way things stand, he either leaves this place or it breaks him.”

“And nobody has ever left.”

“No.”

James did not speak for a long time, but Thomas doubted that he would be sleeping yet, not when he had new information to turn over in his mind and a problem to think his way through. Perhaps he, like Thomas, was reflecting on the change that had come over David as James had dispensed his advice. Perhaps he shared Thomas’s strong sense that this first meeting had not been an end but a beginning and now pondered all the things it might one day lead to. 

“Some ways of breaking a man are more humane than others,” James said, in the tone of a man who knew well what he was talking about. “It is a slow death in this place for one who cannot abide being here.”

“He should not be here,” Thomas said, saying aloud for the first time something he had always known to be true. _And nor should we,_ he told himself. _Nor should we._

“But he is.”

“He is.”

The silence that fell was heavier than the one before it. Thomas could well imagine that James was intentionally quiet, giving Thomas the opportunity to speak the thought that had so decisively come into his mind and now would not leave it. So clearly did it ring in Thomas’s mind that he thought for a moment he had said it aloud.

_Nor should we._

“If he escaped notice coming all the way over here, bothered us for as long as he did and then went back again, that says something for the strength of the security arrangements here,” James said after a time. “It seems rather a large window of opportunity to leave for a known agitator.”

To even broach the topic of leaving this place was to disrupt everything that had brought James to his current state of health and happiness; Thomas could not bring himself to do it, much as he knew it would be most honest to do so. So instead of saying _We should not be here_ , Thomas addressed himself to the topic at hand as best he could, saying only, “The guards do vary somewhat in their dedication.”

“This would be known, though, by the overseer,” James said, rightly dismissive of such an inconsequential remark and impatient to come to the real meat of the matter. “He would put his best men where they are needed and his worst where they are not. The way I see it, either the path was left intentionally clear for Mortimer to come here, either as a trap or as a kindness to him, or this place is far more poorly run than I had thought.”

Thomas dearly wished James would postpone his analysis for the time being and go to sleep, or at least that he would keep his thoughts to himself for the rest of the night. He had Thomas thinking, now, about how David had managed to come here. He thought about what might motivate plantation management, or any individual guard, to allow the visit, and very few of the possibilities that occurred to him boded well for the future. This was what Stephen had been talking about when he had named David a malign influence; he had only mistaken which of James and Thomas was in greater danger of being influenced by him.

“You are very quiet.”

“There is nothing to be done about it now,” Thomas said, wondering just how telling his silence had been to James. “We will see if anything has come of it in the morning.”

“It may be some time before we hear anything about anything that comes of it, if we do at all. This was the first you have seen of him since my arrival, was it not? What is to say the next period of absence will not be longer still?”

“There is too much that is unknown to be attempting to draw any conclusions now,” said Thomas. “We will take it as it comes.”

“Are you more concerned for him, or for us?”

James always did know how to read into a silence.

“My concern is not so easily defined as that,” said Thomas, “and it is easy to overstate such a thing at such an hour, after such a disruption to one’s sleep. These things always look different in the light of morning.”

“I find the night-time brings clarity of thought,” James said quietly. “When we are left undisturbed and unobserved, with only our own thoughts for company, it becomes increasingly difficult to dissemble.”

“Pointed as that comment may be –”

“It is not pointed,” James said. “I am in earnest. I have shaped myself through the eyes of others for longer than I would like. If I were going to make a pointed comment, I would –”

“No, thank you,” Thomas said, stroking a hand across James’s hair, still so dreadfully short. “I would prefer you did not.” He felt the little shiver that went through James at Thomas’s touch and repeated the gesture exactly, smiling to himself as James nudged his head closer. He missed all the things he had been able to do with James’s hair before, but there was potential here, too, that Thomas intended to see fully realised.

“That is a rotten trick,” James said, making no attempt to continue with what he had been saying.

“I am well aware of that.”

It did not take long for James to return to sleep under such conditions, as Thomas had known it would not, but Thomas could not follow him there. His fingers were occupied with their ventures across James’s scalp; his mind was consumed by the fragility of the situation he found himself in. It was all very well to declare thoughts of the future either futile or counterproductive and to say that what was not yet in a person’s possession could not be lost, but Thomas did have something now that could be lost to him and lost forever. He had disregarded that risk once; he would not do so again. 

It had been a very long time since Thomas consciously had taken stock of his situation in life and set about repairing a problem he found in it. Having reached equilibrium some years ago, he had considered that his understanding was complete, both of the whole of the life he led here and of all the parts that comprised it. Now that another part had been added, and that a most cherished and precious part, there was no equilibrium, no balance and no peace of mind. Thomas’s instincts with James were wrong for this place. His instincts for this place were wrong now that James was a part of it. 

As a young man, Thomas had admired the Emperor’s method of interrogating his problems and sought to emulate it, but, looking back, he knew that he had only partially achieved the kind of clarity and understanding that it ought to bring. In Bethlem, he had been unable to conduct such an exercise at all; here in Savannah, painstaking and confronting as it had been, the process had saved his life. 

It was well past time he undertook it again.

The first question, deceptively simple as it was, was always the most confronting: what was it that was impressing itself on Thomas in this moment? In this moment, James’s head rested heavy on his shoulder, his hair prickly under Thomas’s fingers. One of his legs rested against Thomas’s. Earlier this same night, James had called this cabin his home. He had defended it as his home and declared his intention to continue doing so. He swept and tidied and he answered the door. It was plain that he found comfort from being here, with Thomas, somewhere he could work and then rest and did not have to fight. 

But what impressed itself on Thomas right now, as he lay here, was how fundamentally unsound the whole of it was and would continue to be. With a word – not James’s or Thomas’s word but the word of another – it could be ended in an instant. That word did not have to be just or fair or even reasonable. It had only to be spoken, and so things would be. The longer he and James built their home, such as it was, on such unstable foundations, at the mercy of that word and the men who could wield it, the more devastating it must be when those foundations gave way, as ultimately they must. Thomas did not want to build on sand; he wanted to build on rock, solid and firm and unshakable. He wanted to give James something that was real.

That was only the first part of Thomas’s assessment; he must next consider the question of what parts comprised the dilemma he now faced. There was the need to protect and cherish James, yes, that he felt right down to the marrow of his bones, failure in which task would lead to Thomas’s end as surely as a bullet. But there was also the matter of the promises he had made to others in this place, the implicit and the explicit assurances of support he had given to so many. David Mortimer intended to hold him accountable for them; others may not, but Thomas was a man of his word and would not cast them aside. James himself had remarked on Thomas’s influence here, observing that he had played a significant role in the character of the plantation. It was a prison he had, if not made for himself, then at least significantly reinforced. In an effort to protect himself, he had boxed his thoughts in and limited them to this place and its boundaries. He had helped make something palatable that ought not to be, and his success in it had been his curse. It had been, too, a curse he had passed on to so many others, and it was a curse they might not now wish to see lifted from them, having settled into it over so many years and without a James of their own to show them otherwise.

When Thomas turned his mind to the practicalities of a possible life outside the plantation, the prospect raised such a multitude of emotions in Thomas that for a moment he could not breathe and had to run his hand down James’s arm to calm himself, to remind himself that his reflections were in his own mind only, that to face them and not shirk them was an essential element of this process that would bring him to the truth. Thoughts alone were not going to hurt him here. None of this had yet come to pass; it may never come to pass at all. Thomas therefore had nothing to fear from it.

And so Thomas passed to the third question: how long would this state of affairs persist? Thomas knew that he could not both live here and want more for an indefinite period of time. Even without David’s incursion in the night, this fact would have confronted Thomas sooner rather than later. The dilemma was not one that would persist; sooner or later it must resolve, with or without Thomas’s active involvement. 

To resolve it by siding with the present order of things in the name of peace and good health would be for Thomas to consciously make himself into something less than he was, to willingly diminish himself in exchange for the limited and conditional safety and security that could be found here and so deny himself true liberty once and for all. It would be to do the same to James, or at least to ask such a thing of him: to willingly give his ear to be nailed to the post, as it were, and to thenceforth be no more than a slave and a prisoner in this place. 

To resolve the dilemma instead by rejecting the legitimacy of that authority over their lives, by setting men free who ought not to have been imprisoned in the first place and giving them control over their own lives once more, was a daunting task that would require other betrayals, other moves against what Thomas had come to understand as being right in this place. It would mean denying everything that he had built inside himself to accept his place here. It would be a rejection of that which he had told countless men who had come to him for counsel, when he had assisted them to settle into the spare existence here and helped them to find meaning within it. 

One solution was unthinkably simple; it was the absence of decisive action, a slow capitulation that would likely get easier and easier as it went along. The other was a prospect vast and unknowable, terrifying in its uncertainty, dangerous from its very beginning and certain to grow more difficult and more dangerous with each and every step. To make no choice was in itself to choose the former. A man’s desire for freedom could never wholly be shaken from him, but it could be buried and buried deeply. If he buried it deeply enough, it may never again see the light of day.

The final question, then, was what virtue was needed to address the situation. The virtues suggested in the _Meditations_ – gentleness, courage, truthfulness, loyalty, simplicity and self-sufficiency – were not the virtues Thomas had been raised to follow, but he found them more practically useful than those more often applied in the modern age: prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope and charity. Certainly neither prudence nor temperance, hope or charity was likely to help Thomas in his dilemma here, though justice was a worthy and necessary consideration.

James came awake then with a start as Thomas’s fingers still ran absently down his upper arm. After a moment to regain his bearings, during which he first lifted his head off Thomas’s shoulder and then settled back onto it, he said, “You are not sleeping.”

“No,” said Thomas.

“How am I to wake you, as I have sworn faithfully to do, when you will not sleep?”

“I will allow it is not an easy task,” Thomas said. “You might tell me instead what it is that has woken you.”

“That is not the agreement we have.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Moments passed, longer and longer. When James finally spoke, what he said could not possibly have surprised Thomas more. “Charles Vane,” he said, and Thomas could hear the twist to his mouth as he said it.

“Charles Vane,” Thomas said, his thoughts blown miles off their course by the mention of such a name. “He troubles your dreams?”

“His ghost never found me until I came to this place,” James said. “I rather thought he did not have one.”

“What does he say?”

“Oh, the same sorts of things that he said in his life.”

“I would be very interested to hear the kinds of things that Charles Vane said in his life.”

“I can tell you for a fact that you would not.”

Thomas did not argue. He merely waited.

“I was not there to witness them,” James said, “but I am reliably informed that his last words on this earth were _Get on with it, motherfucker._ That is Charles Vane at the height of his eloquence.”

“He came to your aid in Charles Town.” It was all Thomas knew of Charles Vane, save the more lurid tales by the more questionable storytellers at the plantation. Charles Vane had come to Captain Flint’s aid at his trial in Charles Town, and they had left the city in ruins behind them.

“Yeah.” 

Thomas said nothing, hoping that James would continue, but it was too optimistic to think that the same ploy might work twice within a minute. James did take up the invitation to speak, but he did not direct the conversation in the direction Thomas had hoped. “So what keeps you awake tonight, then, you who were so keen to put off any analysis until the morning?”

Thomas had known this question would come sooner or later, and he had his answer prepared. “Gentleness, courage, truthfulness, loyalty, simplicity and self-sufficiency.”

“Ah,” James said. “And what are your results?”

“I tend toward loyalty,” said Thomas, “and it is no help to me.”

“Then choose another.”

“And there is always justice, of course.”

“Is there?”

Thomas pushed at James, as he was well entitled to do when James thought he was being clever. He regretted it immediately, as James rolled away from him and did not return, lying close but no longer touching.

“What can justice look like here, with men held so far from the lives they have known?” James asked. “Do you seek to reach back into the past and undo unjust events that have long since concluded? Our lesson, I thought, was to refuse to be influenced by the past and to live only in the present moment, that being all we may ever truly possess.” He said all this with no small irony, it being a topic he and Thomas had long debated and never agreed upon. The greater irony was the nostalgia it awoke in Thomas for what had been a simpler time, when he had believed what he believed and not allowed himself to be moved from it.

“It is a lesson I thought you quite firmly rejected.”

“Yes,” said James. “But you have invested a great deal in it, and so too did Miranda, and so did John Silver, more deeply than the two of you put together. It seems my fate is to always hold tightly to the past while those closest to me are more than willing to let it fall away.”

“What sort of a philosopher was John Silver?”

“He was not one,” James said unequivocally. “He revealed his philosophy to me once and once only, when he outright refused to share with me anything of his life before we had met. He resisted the very idea that events from the past should be considered to cohere, to form a narrative by which anything about a person can be understood or explained. Anything he felt or believed at one time could be overridden by a change in circumstance; he did not consider himself beholden to anything or anyone that had gone before. It was his nature, whether born or learned over the course of his life. It was not anything he had read in any book.”

“And what if we were to set ourselves free in such a way?”

“You propose we act in pure self-interest at all times and abandon everything that has brought us to this point?”

“No,” said Thomas. “I propose we think of this moment we are in now and see it for what it is.”

“Is this what you have been doing? You sent me to sleep so you could agonise over this undisturbed?”

“Yes.”

James sighed. “I will tell you how I see it, and then we will both sleep.”

“Very well.”

“We are imprisoned,” James said.

“We are.”

“Scores of men are imprisoned here and made to work, never to be free again.”

“True,” said Thomas. 

“We would not be free to love openly and well outside the walls of this plantation,” said James. “Here I am protected from the consequences of my crimes, where anywhere else I would be hanged for them, were I to be discovered.”

“All true.”

“Truth is no help to us, then,” said James.

Of the virtues listed, it was courage that Thomas lacked. He had not even the courage to say that he lacked it, here where surely that should take so little.

“It is easy to overthink things at such an hour and after such an event,” James said.

“And near impossible to stop.”

“It is quite possible,” James said. “What do you need?”

That brought Thomas’s thoughts to an abrupt halt, and his words along with them. He reached out for James, found his wrist and held onto it.

There was quiet surprise in James’s voice. “What?”

“I am very glad that you are here,” Thomas said. He pulled a little on James’s arm, and James obligingly moved himself near enough for Thomas to hold and hold closely, warm skin against warm skin, a man Thomas could trust with both his heart and his life. James’s presence was not an obstacle Thomas must navigate but a tonic for him; he had been foolish to dwell so long alone in his thoughts, and all the more so for having known the folly of it ahead of time. James was here by Thomas’s side and in his arms, and Thomas was blessed by that. He would find his courage in it, in time.


	16. A Story is Untrue - Day 21

After a week’s hard travel from Augusta, on the morning after they arrived in Amelia Thomas finally found someone with a gun to sell who was willing to accept Spanish currency without exorbitantly increasing the asking price: Peter Carpenter, the town’s wheelwright, who had all but winked and nodded at Thomas when he had made his enquiry, very quickly agreeing to a provisional price pending an inspection of the weapon by Thomas’s partner. Mr Carpenter was a broad-shouldered Scotsman with a hoarse voice, long beard and missing finger, and by the time Thomas had gone and returned again with James there was a small sheet of canvas laid out on his workbench with two small lumps underneath it. Mr Carpenter was sitting to one side of the bench on a heavy three-legged stool, sharpening an adze with brisk, sure strokes. 

“There you go,” he said as they stepped into the shop. He tugged the canvas a little sideways, the stone still in his hand, to reveal the corner of a small wooden box. “Take a look. Powder and shot in the box, only two bits extra.”

“It’s stolen,” James said mildly as he approached the bench with Thomas. “Powder and shot are to be included.”

“I thought I was negotiating with Mr Barlow here,” said Mr Carpenter, apparently very familiar with the game James was playing and not at all surprised to find himself playing it. 

“You are,” said James. He folded the canvas back to reveal the box and the sleek flintlock pistol sitting beside it. “He agrees with me.”

It was a beautiful weapon with a sturdy handle and long, thin barrel, its wood carved and polished and its metal components neatly engraved and faultlessly clean. The box, too, was in excellent condition, its wood matching that of the pistol and with carving on the lid in the Celtic style. James lifted the lid to glance briefly at its contents and then closed it again.

“You agree with him?” Mr Carpenter asked, his eyebrows raised, when Thomas turned toward him.

“From time to time, yes,” Thomas said. “In this case, I believe the item’s provenance does play a part in our negotiation.”

Mr Carpenter shrugged, returning his attention to the sharpening of his adze. “It is harder to find a home for a piece of eight than a pound,” he said. “That’s a burden I’m taking on as a goodwill gesture to you fine gentlemen.” He raised his voice and pitched it toward James, who was closely examining the firing mechanism. “You’ll find it’s a very high-quality weapon, sir.” When James made no reply, he added, “And in very fine condition.”

James took his eyes off the weapon he held in his hands and fixed them on Mr Carpenter, his expression too detached to properly be called scathing. After he had made his impression, he returned his attention to the gun, running two fingers slowly along its wooden barrel and taking no further notice of him.

“That is no doubt true,” said Thomas, “and it entirely explains your willingness to be rid of it at such a reasonable price. I see no need to alter our original deal, even with the inclusion of the powder and shot.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Mr Carpenter said to Thomas, now a touch more subdued and glancing once or twice toward James. “If you’ve got any more of that kind of money, I’ll give you a better rate for it than most others in these parts. Or if there’s anything else you’re looking to buy, we could certainly do some further business.”

“That is the last of that kind of money,” Thomas replied despite the twenty-five pieces James was carrying on his person and the scattering of smaller coins Thomas had tucked away in his pockets, carefully kept separate to that which would be used for this purchase. Convenient though it would be to have a majority of British currency to hand while travelling through the British colonies, it was more important to pass through these places without making any great impression, especially when it came to the criminal element. In Norfolk, where the population was larger and the flow of commerce greater, an exchange of currencies could be made without attracting very much notice at all. “Hence the price offered.”

“A shame,” said Mr Carpenter. “Well, if you win any more wagers against Spanish merchants in Bath –” here he did wink at Thomas, quite unashamedly, as he repeated what Thomas had told him “– and find yourselves burdened by any number of pieces of eight, you know where I’ll be. Tuck that gun away, though, until you’re out of town. I’ll throw the box and its contents in at no additional cost. You just remember my name when it comes to the _Spanish_ and forget it when it comes to the English, mmm?”

“I don’t know your name,” James said without looking over.

Thomas made certain to count out the coins he gave to Mr Carpenter, though he had already ensured he would have the correct amount to hand. “A pleasure doing business with you, Mr Cliff,” he said, placing the coins onto the corner of the workbench. James put the wooden box into their snapsack, tucked the pistol into his belt and drew his coat over the top of it. 

Mr Carpenter gave Thomas half a grin in acknowledgement of the false name. “Always happy to deal with distinguished guests from out of town,” he said, leaning over to first count the coins and then firmly shake Thomas’s hand. He snuck one last sideways look at James and then settled himself back upright on his stool, resuming his sharpening as they walked back out onto the street.

The course of the rest of the day had been unremarkable – restocking rations, making enquiries about northward travel, exchanging their light jackets and a few coins for warm winter coats, helping a young couple retrieve their escaped pig and helping them re-retrieve it when it escaped for a second time – but Thomas had observed a tension in James ever since the purchase of the pistol that Thomas did not think could be explained by only the nature of the transaction. Indeed, James had seemed more at ease purchasing a stolen weapon with the proceeds of piracy than he did when approaching an honest shopkeeper in search of basic provisions such as food or clothing. Doubtless he had a great deal more experience in one than he did in the other.

But something was definitely amiss, and so once they had finished their dinner Thomas suggested an evening walk before they retired for the night. James was palpably relieved at the suggestion, and so instead of making their way back to a room that last night had bedded seven men in four beds and would no doubt do similar tonight, they walked slowly along the main road, which was undergoing its final burst of activity before the town settled in for the night. Lights flickered in windows upstairs from shops that were in the process of being closed up; shopkeepers wished each other good night; traffic came in from the outskirts of town by foot and on horseback and in sturdy wooden carts.

James and Thomas walked southward out of town toward an overset cart by the side of the road which they had seen on their arrival the night before. It had been partially disassembled then and was even more so now, missing not only both its wheels but also its axle and a few planks of wood along the right-hand side. They settled down on the ground behind what was left of it, James positioning himself so he would see anyone who came along the road from the north and Thomas doing the same in the other direction.

There was perhaps half an hour of light remaining in the day, and though the sky was clear and the moon already showing itself in the sky, Thomas was not eager to enter the town again after dark on foot, and so he did not waste any time in asking his question. “What is troubling you?”

“We should not go to Norfolk,” James said.

Of all the things Thomas had considered might be the cause of James’s disquiet, the next stop on their itinerary had not been among them. There was nothing he could think of that had happened that day to make such a matter of concern to James. “Why not?”

James looked past Thomas toward the township, a distant frown on his face. “Do you know what I will have to do if I am recognised?” he asked quietly.

Thomas knew full well why James had been impatient to acquire a firearm. He knew the consequences that would flow from James ever being identified as Captain Flint, and he had contemplated on more than one occasion how those consequences might cascade so very quickly out of control, but he and James had agreed that a visit to Norfolk was a risk worth taking. There was much more variety of goods, and higher-quality goods besides, in harbour towns than in the back country, and James had said there was much more readiness to deal in Spanish currency – no doubt the influence of the “Spanish merchants” Thomas and Mr Carpenter had spoken of earlier that day. More importantly, if they were going to be able to develop a real plan for their future they needed information and a great deal of it. Norfolk had been discussed as a place to acquire such information, and Norfolk had been settled on.

“I know what the gun is for,” Thomas said.

James shook his head. “That is not the half of it. A crime committed in a law-abiding land must be concealed, Thomas. It has been a long time since I have lived in a law-abiding land.”

This land did not seem particularly law-abiding to Thomas, especially considering how casually Mr Carpenter had conducted that day’s transaction, but considering where and how James had spent the last decade of his life, Thomas could understand why he would see it as so.

“I cannot do as I have done in the past,” James continued. “I have no standing here which can be leveraged to our advantage, and nor do you. We are outsiders and outlaws and have only ourselves for protection.”

“You knew all this when we decided we would go to Norfolk.”

“I knew there was a danger in it,” James conceded. “I have become, perhaps, a little too accustomed to danger and too comfortable disregarding it. My situation has changed a great deal and so must my assessment of risk.”

“No one will be looking for Captain Flint in the faces of strangers,” Thomas argued. “In a town with a larger population, any given individual will attract less attention, not more. When two strangers walk into a village, every villager will mark their name and mark their face and speak of them to their friends and neighbours. Those two strangers will be noted and remembered.”

They had discussed this before, and James had accepted the truth of it without argument. But now he wrestled with something, and Thomas knew argument was coming. “I did not seek nor achieve anonymity as Flint,” James said. “I wanted and needed to be known. My face is no secret and I cannot change it, whatever beard I might grow, whatever hat or wig I might wear. No matter how much time passes, whatever efforts at disguise are made, there will always be some risk of discovery. Today I truly felt the risk of it for the first time.” He looked Thomas reluctantly in the eye, and Thomas thought for a moment he was going to confess a weakness, to say quite frankly that he was afraid. Then his expression shifted, and Thomas knew he had decided to say something quite different. “The consequences of that discovery,” James said, “are more easily controlled where there are fewer witnesses to anything that might transpire.” 

An uneasy chill went down Thomas’s spine as he contemplated the spectrum of behaviours that that statement might encompass. He had not yet had the chance to discover at what point actions taken in the name of self-defence and survival would become intolerable to him, but he had a fair idea that his position in that regard would significantly differ from James’s. “I have no desire to perpetually sneak about the countryside,” he said, as yet unable to articulate the nature of his disquiet to James. “I understand avoiding major ports, but –”

“I have no desire to hang,” said James. 

Anger flashed in Thomas that James would call on such a horror – anger also that it was a plausible danger, anger especially that James had come so close to it before, anger above all that he had courted it for so very long and so recklessly during his career as a pirate. 

Miranda had warned Thomas of what he risked by his relationship with James, and Thomas had considered it an abstraction, an outrageously unjust law that could never and would never be applied to a man in his position and therefore, by a simple progression of logic, could also not be levelled against James. He wondered if Miranda had put up any such argument when James had proposed to her his means of restoring Nassau, if she had raised the spectre of a public hanging in an attempt to dissuade him from it and been ignored for a second time. He wondered if she had warned James the first time, too, as she had warned Thomas, and so been thrice disregarded, when every single time she had had the right of it.

“What I mean is I will not hang,” James said, rather more gently but equally firmly. “I will do whatever is required to ensure that you and I avoid that fate, and that means not walking into any place I cannot guarantee us a way out of. There is simply no prospect of our returning to civilised society. If you hold out hope for that, I am sorry, but it is a hope that cannot be fulfilled. I simply cannot do such a thing.”

“Because you cannot, or because you will not?”

“I have told you before,” said James, his patience straining. “Even were such a thing possible, even if Captain Flint and his misdeeds were entirely forgotten overnight, if we were free to do entirely as we liked without any prospect of pursuit or legal proceedings, I would not even then consent to being a subject of the Crown. I will not do it.”

It had been easier to accept such a thing when England had been a distant memory to Thomas and when the only society he knew any more was a prison plantation in Savannah, where any measure of additional freedom would be considered exceptional. Now Thomas was free, and he had spent the last fortnight skirting around the edges of community, encountering travellers and locals, slowly gaining an understanding of the shape of this new society, its commerce and its politics, and becoming increasingly curious as to its wider nature. He was turning his mind to everything that a society could and should be, and he yearned to be back in it, to put down roots and build a life with James that would both sustain them and enrich the lives of those around them. Only then, he felt certain, would they be in a position to make their mark on what other parts of the world they could reach.

But on this point James was as unshakable as Thomas had ever known him to be. He did not speak equivocally; he gave no hint of a willingness to compromise. Thomas struggled to reconcile this man with the one who had stood before him not two weeks ago and attempted to pledge his service and his life to Thomas. Then, it had seemed, there had been no limit to what he would have done if Thomas had asked him. Now he would not budge if there were twelve oxen on notice to encourage him to do so, or half an army, or ten armies. This was what Thomas had brought upon himself in declining what James had offered him that day in Savannah, when he had stood in front of Thomas and said _It was right when I was yours_.

“England is not the only option available to us,” Thomas said. “There are other places a home could be made not so very much further north. I know you speak some French.”

James looked at Thomas with interest and no small measure of amusement. “You’re Catholic now, are you?”

“No,” said Thomas. “But you pretended in the Navy for all those years. There is no reason I could not do the same.”

“Perhaps you have forgotten this,” said James, “but I am an inveterate liar and impostor and have been so from a very young age. I can disavow transubstantiation one day and declare for it the next, and doing so does not bother me in the slightest. Will you publicly renounce your faith, in full view of God and everybody, simply to gain residence in a foreign land? Will you be ruled by the Pope and his bishops, take communion under false pretences and make regular confession of your sins to a Catholic priest?”

 _Yes_ , Thomas wanted to say in defence of his proposal, but his lips would not move. 

“And I was never really Catholic in the first place, not properly,” said James, quite graciously and unexpectedly sparing Thomas any form of _I told you so_. But then his tone flattened and no trace of mirth or generosity remained. “And I was under the aegis, of course, of Admiral Hennessey, who had already told me the ways in which I would need to behave and pointed out to me every habit I had picked up from my grandfather that may engender suspicion. I have done it, yes, and that is why I am of the very firm opinion that you could not do the same.”

 _And nor can I live indefinitely roaming the wilds of America_ , Thomas thought. The admission of it, even only to himself, grieved him. It was not that he would prefer not to, or that he thought the idea impractical or ill-advised. It was simply a thing he could not do, not without knowing there was something else, something better on the other side of it. He could try it, and he would if James asked him to, but he knew perfectly well how such an effort would end and what the attempt would cost him.

James was watching him and waiting for a response. Thomas thought of all the ugly things he knew about James, the weaknesses in his character and the ghastly deeds he had done. He thought of how James showed Thomas these things and continued to let him see them, and he marvelled at the immense courage that spoke of, and the absolute trust. “And I cannot live indefinitely roaming the wilds of America,” he said, unable to keep the words from being bitter but determined to speak them. “I could not endure it. I need to know where we are going and what we will do once we are there. I need that, James.”

“All right,” said James, his voice pitched to soothe. He looked at Thomas solemnly, acknowledging the significance of what had been said. 

“I said I would help you, and I will,” said Thomas. “I will stay with you for as long as I draw breath, but what you describe is not a life for me.”

James’s face twisted this way and that, and his throat worked fiercely to find its way around the words he wanted. “I cannot let it go,” he said. “I cannot have it end.”

“I do not ask you to,” said Thomas, but the thought was in him that if he did ask James, if he beseeched and entreated him, if he leaned on everything that had gone between them, everything that James had revealed of himself and everything Thomas had come to learn of him, he could have his way. He could put an end to it all if he had the will to, if he was willing to cut James off at the knee rather than let him down gently.

He was not.

“It all depends upon what we discover as we go,” said James. “I cannot formulate a real plan with this little information, and the only way to acquire further information is to travel and seek it out.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “And avoiding highly populated areas is a tactic unlikely to yield to us the best and most recent information. If we remain exclusively in the back country, our task will be more difficult and will take longer. It will lessen the risk in some respects, but it will also necessarily prolong the existence of that risk.”

“We are not citizens,” James said again. “We cannot simply take a house in town and listen to the neighbourhood gossip.”

“I agree that you could not,” said Thomas. “Or at least I believe it is better that you do not. But it is your face that is known, not mine. It is you who would face the gallows if discovered, not me. I could move in society and invite little danger by doing so. The name of Thomas Barlow could be made respectable, if we wished it, and doors would open for us that otherwise would remain locked tight.” Thomas knew that such a suggestion stood in stark contrast to James’s avowed beliefs of the corrupting power of civilisation in fighting injustice. He could see the fears and doubts growing in him as Thomas spoke, his lips clamped tight together and shuttered pain in his eyes. Thomas reached out to touch his hand, hoping to draw his mind out of those darker thoughts and back into the present moment. “Would you take to the sea without an anchor?”

He watched James slowly and intentionally expel the tension from his face. “The only true partnership I have ever known to last in this world is that of Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny,” he said, as though this logically followed from Thomas’s question. “Others have tried. God knows I have tried. I have lived very nearly forty years on this earth, and the list of successful and enduring partnerships I have come across begins and ends with the two of them. For all that I never saw why either one so much as liked the other – frankly, I don’t know what there is to like about either – I have never had a moment’s doubt that they loved each other. I do not understand it, but I cannot deny it.”

There was always something uncanny about hearing James speak this way of names Thomas had heard only in lurid larger-than-life stories and whispered reports from guards or newcomers to the plantation. To Thomas, Rackham and Bonny existed on a similar plane of existence to Robin Hood and Maid Marian: so singular and remarkably powerful a concept that it was almost better that they were not real. The less that was known of them, the more they could be. It was very odd indeed to think that James had known them and did not think much of them.

“I have long pondered love and the forms it takes,” James said. “I wonder if those two have not somehow perfected it and in so doing made fools of the rest of us who try.”

“I am not a fool,” said Thomas.

James sat and looked at Thomas for a long enough time that Thomas began to be concerned he might disagree. “No, you are not,” he said in the end. “But I wonder if this venture we embark upon will not make fools of us both.”

“And what venture would that be?”

James’s expression was mournful. “To hold two ideals as paramount simultaneously. To commit to each other as steadfastly as we commit to improving the world,” he said. “We tried it once before.”

Thomas thought back to those heady days. _I support it,_ James had said of Thomas’s plan – and then, only moments later, of Thomas himself, _Someone should be willing to defend it._ It was difficult to think where their personal passions had ended and their political passions had begun, if such a distinction could even properly be made. “I do not believe we did,” he said as he reflected on it. “I do not recall there being much difference between the two. A commitment to one was, by its very nature, a commitment to the other.”

Since being reunited they had spoken so much of the time they had spent apart from each other and very little of the time they had shared. Thomas watched James now, and James watched Thomas, and everything they had been hung between them in the air, cherished and beautiful and so very, very long ago.

“You propose drawing a line,” James said carefully, “between the personal and the political.”

“Perhaps,” said Thomas. 

A muscle twitched by James’s eye as he thought that over. Thomas reached over and touched that cheek with the back of two fingers, and James went still at his touch.

“Look where we are,” Thomas said. “Think what we could do. I have missed you so dreadfully.”

James closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. When he opened them again, his gaze was soft and earnest. “I want it,” he said quietly. “I want what you speak of. I want a home that is safe, and I want to share it with you. The dreams I have had, over the years …” 

Thomas turned his hand around and laid his palm against James’s cheek. “As I too have dreamed.”

But James shook his head, sorrow plain on his face. “But it comes at a cost I simply cannot pay,” he said, and there was regret in his eyes but no apology. “I will not yield to them. I will not live my life subject to the British Empire. I will not forgive and I will not forget the things they have done – not to me, not to anybody. I simply cannot.” 

This was a wound of which they had not yet spoken, which Thomas thought might have cut deepest of all. They had spoken of Miranda at length, of Thomas’s time on the plantation a little and his time in Bethlem even less, but never the rest of it. Now, perhaps, the time had come to have it all out. James had not, after all, sailed to Nassau and resolved to defy England upon learning of Thomas’s death. It had begun earlier than that, with a different type of wound, and Thomas had not been there to see it inflicted. Miranda had not been there to see it inflicted. In that moment, James had been alone. Thomas swallowed, brushed his thumb along James’s cheek and slowly gathered the strength to ask. “What did he say to you?” 

James’s eyes narrowed; he leaned back from Thomas’s hand. “Who?”

 _Admiral Hennessey_ , Thomas thought. “My father,” he said.

James’s lip curled. “He said, _I’ll give you anything, everything you desire_. He said, _Please_.”

Thomas shivered at the jagged pain in James’s voice but did not break their gaze. “You know that is not what I am referring to.”

“It is all I care to remember,” James declared. When Thomas made no response he added, more than a little defensively, “You said you did not wish to dwell on Bethlem.”

“But if I wish to speak of it, you will listen.”

James answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“And so too I will listen if you ever want to tell me what it is they said to you that day.”

James did not miss the change from “he” to “they”, but he did not remark upon it. He was withdrawing back into himself, distancing himself from the memory of it all as they spoke, as one might back very slowly away from a snarling wolf with which one has accidentally locked eyes.

“I will listen to anything you wish to tell me,” Thomas said firmly.

“I have no interest in you hearing anything they said. It does no good to speak of it.”

“I am not convinced of that,” said Thomas.

James looked at Thomas with a cold, cold certainty. “I am.”

“Very well,” said Thomas, his heart aching but unable to do anything other than accept James’s word. There were still other things they had to discuss, and the evening grew deeper and darker by the minute. “I do ask you to consider what shape you wish our future to take and where it might find anchor.”

“In you,” James said.

It was insulting, really, that James had even tried such a trick, on Thomas of all people. “And so where am I to be?” 

James bit back one answer, then two. 

“You are a very clever man,” Thomas said. “I believe you can lead the life you desire without having to submit to anything or anyone you do not wish to submit to.”

“Flatterer.”

“If you were not so vain, I would not be required to flatter you so often.”

“Is that so?” James asked with a glint of true amusement.

And there was the moment to strike. “Virginia,” Thomas said. “Do you have any particular history in Virginia?”

James considered that question for rather longer than Thomas thought necessary. He could see the suspicion in James’s eyes, his awareness that Thomas was manoeuvring and strategising just as much as he himself had been. “No,” he said simply, in the end.

“Will you consider staying there a time? Not in Williamsburg or Norfolk, but further inland, if we can find somewhere suitable?”

The silence was even longer this time. Thomas let James weigh his conflicting desires in peace, watching the light fade from the landscape as the sun sank slowly below the horizon. He thought about how quick James had been to load the pistol after purchasing it and how near to his hand he had kept it ever since. Being finally armed with something more than a knife had certainly not set his mind at ease in the way Thomas had hoped it might.

It occurred to Thomas as he sat there and awaited an answer to his question that if James truly believed there was some risk arising from the transaction with Mr Carpenter, any danger of someone seeking them out to ask questions or make accusations, this quiet spot a little way out of town was a fairly good location for James to control the consequences, as he had said, of such a situation. He wondered if coming and sitting out here after dark might not indeed be read as a tacit invitation by any such interested parties and if James had been eager to take up Thomas’s suggestion for that very reason. 

“Yes,” James said after a fair few minutes. “I will consider it.”

“I would not wish to travel any further north in the cold months,” said Thomas. “I have heard tell of Pennsylvania winters.”

“You know,” said James, “I have all but forgotten snow.”

Thomas had never been particularly fond of winter, and even what had felt like a lifetime of scorching, stifling heat on the plantation did not induce him to change his position. James, a boy from the Cornish coast who had made his home in the West Indies for as long as Thomas had been imprisoned in Carolina, was not made for snow any more than Thomas was, and yet Thomas had the sudden urge to take him north, cold and wet and miserable though it would be, and to pass the winter with hot fires, soft blankets, spiced wine and glistening white countryside as far as the eye could see. It was a childlike dream, bright and shining and so very far away from anything approaching reality, but there was something deeply comforting about it all the same.

“Those who speak loudest against the slave trade are to be found in the north,” said James, puncturing Thomas’s wistful imaginings with customary practicality. “If you wish to join any established organisation or network and to make a home in that way among like-minded people, Pennsylvania winters may become a necessary evil.”

Thomas had been such a young man when he had first heard whispers of the arguments against slavery being made by Mennonites in the Pennsylvania colony. He vividly remembered the tone of his father’s voice and his disgusted dismissal of the topic when Thomas had asked him about the Religious Society of Friends and how determined he had been, as a result, to learn the truth of who these people were and what they believed. 

It had taken him some time – years, in fact – to finally cross paths with an actual Friend, but eventually he had met John Talbot, who was four years older than Thomas and had asked him without warning one afternoon, as they walked to the Grecian to meet some of John’s friends, whether Thomas did or did not believe that women should be entitled to stand beside men as their equals in intellect and spiritual strength and whether a parliament elected by wealthy landowners should be empowered to compel social and religious behaviours from the disenfranchised. 

Thomas, who was then nineteen and had been engaged in rigorous debate about standing armies, the raising of taxes and the divine right of kings with his peers for over a year and who spent little to no time in his daily life thinking about women, had been flummoxed by these direct and unforgiving questions and embarrassed by his inability to provide an answer to either of them when put on the spot by someone whose mind he admired near as much as he did the soft grey of his eyes. John had laughed at him, and Thomas had wondered how a man who saw so much injustice in the world could be so beautiful and so happy and why he was bothering to bring Thomas, young and painfully simple as he was, along to this meeting of the very finest minds in London. He remembered thinking that it was deeply and devastatingly unjust that John, who brimmed with civic spirit and Christian charity, could never take the place he deserved in the shaping of his own country. John Talbot, a born politician if Thomas had ever met one – and, by virtue of his father’s education, he certainly had – could not participate in law or politics without disavowing beliefs that were integral to his very being. That had struck Thomas as being fundamentally wrong at the time, and it still did now.

“You are thinking of John Talbot again,” said James.

“It is twenty years ago now that he left for Pennsylvania,” said Thomas. He remembered those few years following John’s departure, how long it had taken for him to stop holding out hope that the promised correspondence would transpire. The worst part of it had been not knowing whether John had come to grief en route to the New World or whether he had arrived there safely and simply decided not to write. Thomas had not known whether to mourn John or to detest him and in that state of uncertainty had not properly been able to do either. 

“We can seek him out,” said James, “if you would like to.”

“Perhaps,” said Thomas. If John had survived his voyage, if he had successfully settled and made his home in Pennsylvania, twenty years had still passed since the time Thomas had known him. It had not taken Peter Ashe anywhere near as long to turn into something quite different from the man Thomas had known. He did not want to sully the memory of the first man he had loved with more than a boy’s simple worship. He wanted some things, at least, from his life to remain pure.

“We can see out the winter in Virginia,” said James. “There will be towns enough in the back country that we will be able to find somewhere suitable for a few months.”

“We can rest,” said Thomas.

The conflict remained on James’s face. Anything that was not progress in the war against England he hesitated at; anything that resembled stability or peace was viewed with the highest of suspicion. Thomas could tell that he was close to declaring once again his desire to resist and to defy.

Thomas had heard it enough and had grown weary of it. “Until the weather turns,” he said before James could draw breath to begin.

“Until the weather turns,” James said, and something in his eyes made it a question, though he had simply repeated Thomas’s own words. “If I am tempted, then, to remain at rest still …”

“I will not allow it,” said Thomas. “I will turn you out of your bed and drive you before me onto the road with cracking whips and baying hounds.”

James smiled, but there was a serious plea in his eyes as they met Thomas’s.

“I promise,” Thomas said quite sincerely. “I know there is work yet to be done, and I will see it done with you.”

James scratched at his beard. “Very well,” he said. “I agree to your terms.”

“Virginia, then,” said Thomas.

“Virginia,” said James.


	17. A Story is True - Day 34

Only one man had ever been disappeared in all Thomas’s time in Savannah. That had been Jack Phillips – three years ago, nearly – and no one had been sorry to wake up that morning and hear of his passing. In fact, there had been a small celebration that evening after dinner, to which plantation management had turned a very rare blind eye. Ned had led the toast with his last few drops of smuggled rum and announced that Phillips’s grave would also be its final resting place. He had quickly abandoned that idea when rain had started to fall that night. When Thomas and Charles Urquhart had gone up to the cemetery the next day, they had found no marker for Phillips at all.

Charles still had not regained the proper use of his arm after the incident in the autumn of ’14, and Roger Cummins was allowed to wear his hair long in order to cover the scar across the back of his neck. Thomas himself had not sustained any permanent damage at Phillips’s hand, but none of the three of them had ever been asked to go out into those woods again. Indeed, they had been given their choice of duties for the entirety of the following month. Roger had moved to the gristmill, Charles to the kitchen and Thomas to the prisoners’ garden, where he had been treated with amused condescension by Walter Wilkins, who had been at the plantation nearly as long as Thomas and thought there was nothing funnier than a lord of the realm growing cabbages and onions at his direction. By the time that month had elapsed Jack Phillips was no more, and thereafter his name could be whispered to remind others that the patience of Mr Oglethorpe was not infinite and his leniency was not without limit. No prisoner could leave the plantation who had entered it, and so there was only one thing that could be done when reform proved impossible. 

Thomas had held some fears on David’s account, worrying that his behaviour might escalate into the truly unmanageable and he would tempt such a fate to come upon himself, but by all reports he had managed himself decently well since he had appeared in James and Thomas’s cabin that night. He had been put to work in the milkhouse, replacing James now that James was being sent to work in the fields. David was surly but compliant, and William had heard it from Tim Larkey and Martin Lawrence, who lived together two cabins down from David and Wayland, that he was no longer assigned his own guard to watch him day and night. On the few occasions that Thomas had crossed paths with him, David had thrown him quietly resentful looks and passed him by without speaking. 

James too was quiet in public, nigh on taciturn. He did his work without complaint, careful not to draw adverse attention or behave in any way that might incite conflict. Some men he got on with, some he did not. He posed no physical threat to the men on the plantation, as Phillips had. Phillips had assaulted at least five men and terrorised more; James had only ever laid out Joe Williams last Wednesday, and that had been in answer to quite unprecedented provocation, as witnessed and sworn to by many, including Wyndham, Bradford and, reluctantly, Ainsworth. He had struck one blow and no more, swallowing his anger and submitting without argument to the authority of the guards immediately following. It was no worse than a dozen prisoners had done before him. If one disregarded the manner of his arrival and the name he had brought with him, James was a wholly unremarkable prisoner and a wholly unremarkable man

But one could not, of course, disregard the manner of James’s arrival and the name he had brought with him. If anything, the fascination with him was growing over time; he was watched by guards and prisoners alike, longer and more openly as it became clear James offered no reprisals to anyone doing so. Whether he willed it or not, James drew attention by the mere fact of his existence; the more pacific his demeanour, the more curiosity grew among the men as to why. 

Thomas could feel his control over the situation slipping – or, rather, he could no longer deny how perilously little control he had over the situation at all. James was doing nothing at all to cause it. He did not complain when he was treated unfairly nor seek to actively influence anybody’s opinion of him. He was stoic and impassive, seemingly ignorant of the sense of anticipation that was coming over the plantation and unaware that time was beginning to pass differently – not ponderously, as was usual here, but with increasing speed and purpose.

Two days after Christmas, Archie Lewis called Thomas over as he passed through the east gate on his way back from the privy at lunchtime, looking furtively from side to side as he did. “He needs to put an end to this,” he said to Thomas. “He needs to fucking stop.” 

Lewis always looked grumpy, but his was customarily a lazy sort of grumpiness. He was a man of drooping brow and drooping jowl, and rarely was he moved to speak in anything outside of a monotone. Thomas could not have been more surprised if a jackrabbit had spoken to him with such vehemence.

“He needs to –”

“ _You_ are the only reason he’s been untouchable so far,” Lewis said. “You’re the one he came for; you’re supposed to have him in hand. Whatever he’s doing, he needs to stop it and stop it quickly. Now walk on. I haven’t said anything to you.”

“James is not doing –”

“I said walk on, Thomas. Walk on quickly.”

So Thomas walked on. His feet took him a little more northward than was necessary, to where he knew James had been stationed with half a dozen of the quietest and most hard-working men. Dunstan, Miles and Patton were assigned within view of where James was working; Thomas knew perfectly well why those men had been chosen. 

James was already taking up his tools again, though the whistle had not yet blown to signal the end of the lunch break. He received Thomas calmly but with a touch of apprehension; Thomas had visited him at lunch a few times before, but to do so too often was to invite comment, and therefore danger, and test their reputations among guards and prisoners alike. After today, Thomas would not do it again, but now he wasted no time in relating to James exactly what Lewis had said to him. James expressed no surprise at all, only sighed and leaned on his shovel. “There is nothing I can say or do that would _not_ engender suspicion,” he said, exasperated. “I cannot breathe but someone takes it as a sign of something or other, and if I were to stop breathing altogether they would suspect a nefarious plot to bring them all to ruin. I am in no position to put an end to it, not in the way I am accustomed to doing.”

James had not spoken unequivocally for or against this place nor raised the prospect of their departing it, though Thomas had more than once presented him with an opportunity to do so if he was minded. He remained neutral, patient and willing to follow wherever Thomas led, seemingly not cognisant of the power he could wield over Thomas if he were to speak on the subject. Thomas doubted very much that that was the case; far more likely was that James knew perfectly well that Thomas would give him anything he asked for and therefore had determined that he would not declare himself one way or the other but leave Thomas to his own choice. 

Thomas knew the power he held over James. He knew the beacon he had been to him over the years. James had defied Lord Alfred Hamilton for Thomas, done vile, unthinkable things in his name, waged war and put himself through hell and then somehow come out the other side of it willing to live imprisoned and docile if it meant he would be able to do so by Thomas’s side. 

He had always asked Thomas for so very little.

“They fear you, I suppose, because they believe you could ruin them,” Thomas said, gazing out over the whispering cane. “There have been men here before who have caused trouble; none before have ever been considered the least threat to this place on any fundamental level. You, who have done nothing but willingly comply, have struck fear into their hearts by your mere presence.”

James looked up at him, head cocked and mouth twisted in a knowing grin. His eyes glittered in the sun, clever and calculating, and Thomas knew without a shadow of a doubt that James had been neutral on the matter only for Thomas’s sake, that this was the answer he had been expecting and waiting for all this time with patience to rival that of Job. “Tired of it, are you?”

In this place Thomas had shied away from risk. He had persisted in the face of despair and called it victory. Now James stood here before him, both angel and demon, and showed him other possibilities, casting the entire world in a light Thomas’s eyes were not yet accustomed to. For now, it still stung him to look. 

“Thomas?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “I am.”

James held Thomas’s gaze a little longer, letting the weight of the moment settle in. “Very well,” he said, standing a little straighter and scratching his chin, one hand still on the shovel. “It will take some time to develop a strategy.”

“You have already formulated at least half a dozen plans of escape.” 

James chuckled and pulled the shovel out of the ground, moving back into a working stance. “Certainly not,” he said out of the side of his mouth he smiled on. “Unthinkable notion.”

“Be careful,” Thomas said. He had meant it to be commanding and judicious. It came out a plea, and James, who had started to survey the ground and the work ahead of him, looked back up at him intently. “You are in very real danger.”

“I never for a second thought otherwise,” James said. “I’m fairly used to it by now.”

Thomas stood for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose you are.”

James grinned again, either not noticing or choosing to ignore Thomas’s somewhat grim tone. “You are quite wrong in your accusation, you know,” he said. “I have not formulated half a dozen plans of escape.”

“No?”

“Six plans would suggest either desperation or a lack of focus,” James said. “I have four, and that is more than enough to go on with.”

Thomas smiled despite himself, and James’s grin became wicked and complicit. It did not falter when the whistle blew; he kept his eyes on Thomas, who could not bring himself to look away. How was it that here, on the other side of the world to where they had first loved each other, with both of their lives utterly unrecognisable compared with what they had been, Thomas still felt exactly the same way about James McGraw? How could his heart feel the same fire that it had back then, after the horror that had been wrought on him the first time around? 

What might it do to them this time?

“Hamilton!” Dunstan shouted. “Move along!”

James rolled his eyes and looked away from Thomas. Thomas put his hand over James’s on the shovel and leaned in for a kiss. James met him halfway, pulling away again only with extreme reluctance. Thomas had half a mind to take another – when they were gone from the plantation, he may never again be able to do so as freely as this – but he thought better of it. Instead, he removed his hand from James’s and stepped away from him.

He saw a thought occur to James, but James decided against voicing it and waved Thomas away. “Work to be done,” he said instead, with a glint in his eye, and he stomped one foot on the ground to test the soil. 

Thomas walked away from James and back to his field, to his row, resuming his work without offering any explanation for his lateness to his guards or his fellow workers. When each wave of fear came over him he paused to acknowledge it, to understand it and to accept it. He had been a fool not to be afraid last time, and he had lost twelve years to the malice and small-mindedness of other men. He had lost Miranda, who of the three of them had been the only one to understand that the consequences of their actions could be grievous and that fear was not only warranted but necessary in order for sound decisions to be made.

He and James had held their private memorial for Miranda two days ago, on what had been her favourite day of the year. Thomas had told James of his proposal and the delight with which she had accepted it, and James had spoken to Thomas of their house in Nassau and how it had, over the years, become a home to the two of them. On this first Christmas James and Thomas spent together, they shared stories of the ones they had each spent with Miranda, and there had been laughter among the tears.

Thomas would not go so far as to say he felt Miranda’s presence with them then, but her absence was so keenly and precisely felt that he had a sense of her all the same. He could guess the things she would say to him, if she could. 

He would not make the same mistake again. This time, he would listen to her. This time, he would know fear and be the wiser for it.

* * *

“Plan one,” James said, his voice barely above a whisper and candlelight flickering on his face. “A carefully selected group of us bargain our way to freedom by the use of one or more hostages.”

Thomas had to bite his tongue so he would not reflexively protest the very idea of hostage-taking. He knew perfectly well that nothing James was going to propose would be entirely palatable to him; he had known it as soon as the notion had taken him that they could leave. But it was one thing to know it and something else to hear it, to be invited to consider its details and contribute to its execution.

“There were ladies in the house when I first came through,” James said. “I see carriages come in on occasion. What do you know of the visitors who come here?”

“I have only third and fourth-hand knowledge,” Thomas said. “It is my understanding that Mr Oglethorpe’s sister is a Mrs Coleridge, and she assists him with the running of his household. He has a cousin, Mr Ingles, who calls from time to time. From town there is a Mrs Yates, whose late husband was one of Mr Oglethorpe’s closer friends. There is also a connection with a family called Northby: two sisters, I believe, and the brother is a local landowner. I am not aware of the nature of that connection.”

James frowned, playing absently with the flame with fingers as he thought. 

“You spoke of a carefully selected group,” Thomas said. “How would such a group be selected?”

James removed his fingers from the candle and looked solemnly across at Thomas. “They must be men of fortitude, men who do not lose their heads when a plan goes awry,” he said. “There must be those among them who are assumed to be willing to carry out any threat that might be made. The threat of violence cannot and must not be believed to be empty."

“If you were to lead us, would that not –”

“I cannot be alone in it,” James said firmly. “If I am seen as the only one who poses any real danger, then all they will need to do is remove me from the field and their victory will be won. It must be the case that they could take down two, three, four of us and it would still not be enough.”

There were names that sprang immediately to Thomas’s mind. “The kind of men you speak of are not the kind of men I trust.”

“Every man can be trusted to act in what he perceives as his interest,” James countered. “That is why we must arrange it so that all our interests and expectations are properly aligned. If we can do this, then trust of the kind you speak will not be necessary.”

“I do not much like the idea.”

“I didn’t think that you would.”

James said it without criticism and without judgement of any kind, but it stung Thomas to hear all the same. This was not the same as disagreeing over matters of principle in Thomas’s study or engaging in debate over abstractions and potential matters of moral conflict. There, Thomas had been safe never to compromise. Here, the kind of moral purity he had sought then to advance was cast as a weakness. It was a means by which their escape or release became less probable, less easy, less viable. Here, placing any emphasis on virtue would be a setback to James and what he was seeking to do for them both. 

“It is not the only plan I have considered,” James said, “though I do consider it has the best chance of success. Would you like to hear the plan I think you will approve of most, that has next to no chance of it at all?”

“Thank you,” said Thomas. “That is very flattering.” 

“I have not dismissed it out of hand,” James said magnanimously.

“You are too kind.” 

Thomas saw Lieutenant James McGraw grinning at him then from across the table, delighted with himself for having goaded Thomas to speak even a little snappishly when he had been doing everything in his power to remain objective and composed. 

“Have you considered using your considerable powers of provocation to simply annoy Mr Oglethorpe to the point where he wishes you gone?” 

James raised his hand to muffle a burst of laughter. “Yes,” he said, suppressed chuckles shaking his chest. “That is more or less the plan I am speaking of.”

“You thought I would approve of that as a plan?”

“You have just now suggested it, have you not?”

Thomas fixed James with a look that might have been stern, had his lips not been twitching and his heart not skipping with joy at once again being able to witness James’s laughter.

James largely composed himself and lowered his hand from his face, though his smile was far from having disappeared. “The moral argument,” he said, wiping briefly at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Mr Oglethorpe presents himself as an enlightened man. He relies on his virtue and his altruistic intentions to rationalise the existence of this place, whose practices by any objective measure must be considered unjust and unjustifiable.”

“Must they?”

The look James gave him then was another one Thomas had seen a great many times before, both in his study and in his bedchamber. It was a look that said James would hear Thomas, as was his duty, but that there was little Thomas could say that would alter the opinion he had already formed.

There were things Thomas had convinced James of, though, even after such an expression had been directed his way. Not a great many things, it was true, but some.

“There are men here who would never consider leaving, even if the gate were opened and Mr Oglethorpe himself invited them to walk through it,” Thomas said. “There is security and stability here, and more in the way of personal liberty than would be found in any other prison. To end this place, either by means of violence or psychology, would be a crushing thing for those men.”

James’s nostrils flared, and the look in his eyes was certainly not levity. “That’s the thing about freedom,” he said. “If you are without it for too long, you begin to forget what it feels like. It can be redefined for you by anyone with an interest in doing so, and you no longer remember the truth of it well enough to resist the definition.”

“If you were here long enough, would you settle in and forget the rest of the world?”

James’s eyes moved slowly over Thomas’s face and then lost their focus. “Perhaps I could,” he said. “In time.”

“And if you were here on your own?”

James’s answer was swift and uncompromising as his eyes came back into focus. “No.”

“I had wondered if there was any appeal in this place to you other than my presence in it.”

“No.”

“You have no desire to simply stop and rest?”

James sighed heavily. The candle flickered under the gust of breath and nearly went out. “You know that I do,” he said. “You know it is something I have wanted for a long time. You know equally that I have never come anywhere close to achieving it, and I certainly will not be able to do so here. So much is painfully obvious and was so even before Mr Lewis made his disclosure to you.”

“You have found some respite here.”

“I did not find it in this place but in you,” James said. “Being here has allowed me that, at least.”

The hour was late, and James’s words tempted Thomas with thoughts of James in his arms, in their bed, taking respite together from this conversation, their dilemma and the entire world outside their own four walls. But it was not time for that yet, not with so much ground yet left to cover. 

“What argument do you think you might make that would see us free?” 

“None,” said James. “It all revolves around the character of the man, and you have known him a great deal longer than I. If there is any prospect of this plan succeeding –”

“Which you say there is not.”

“– then you will need to play a large part in it.”

“I have rather learned my lesson when it comes to trusting in a moral argument,” Thomas said. “I think we can move on from plan four.”

“Plan two is bribery,” James said obligingly. “There is a cache of gems of immense value buried on a distant island in a location known only to me. I have some experience of the lengths men will go to to get their hands on that kind of wealth.”

“It is an extremely speculative prize.”

“So was the _Urca de Lima_ and her gold,” said James. “I made good on that.”

“You convinced pirates to go after the _Urca_ ,” Thomas pointed out. “These men are far from pirates. They do not spend their lives hunting great prizes. They are not desperate. They work one day after another and are paid adequately for it. Men with secure incomes are not easily tempted by abstract reward, however large.”

“Yes,” James said ruefully. “I know.”

“The guards here are very carefully selected,” Thomas said. “They are hand-picked by Mr Oglethorpe and quickly dismissed if there is any doubt of their reliability and suitability for the job.”

“So explain Browne,” James said, rolling his eyes. 

“Well,” said Thomas. “There is that. But I am surprised you think any guard would believe you, let alone risk his reputation and career on the back of it.”

James shrugged. “I would be telling them the truth.”

“That has very little bearing on whether anyone will believe it.”

“Men believe what they wish to believe,” said James. “I have sold many more far-fetched prospects than this. If the right target can be found, an escape could be made with no hostages and no bloodshed.”

“An escape for how many?”

“You and I,” James said. “An operation of stealth must be absolutely limited if it is to succeed.”

“After what you said to David, you would leave him behind?”

“I told him I wished never to see him again,” James said. “I believe your concern is with what you have said to him.”

“I promised to help him.”

James nodded. “If Mortimer is to be involved, this plan becomes even riskier and more dangerous than it already was. Under those circumstances, I cannot recommend it.”

“The final plan is open rebellion, isn’t it?” Thomas said, tired of holding the thought in the back of his mind. “It is to take up arms and fight our way free.”

“Yeah,” said James. “It is.”

They sat quietly for a time, Thomas watching the candle as it burned and James watching Thomas. 

After a time, James spoke. “We make preparations, and we wait until such conditions arise as will enable a mass escape,” he said briskly. “Storm, fire, disease, external conflict. We seize whatever weapons we can, disrupt the plantation and force our escape. This plan works in large number, but I am unlikely to be able to coordinate so many when secrecy will be so vital in the lead-up. It would likely result in chaos through the plantation and a core band, better prepared and more organised than the rest, with which we would remain. In all probability, it would result in death and destruction that will be entirely out of our control.”

“When exactly did you begin to formulate these plans?”

James answered without hesitation. “On the evening of the twenty-eighth of November.”

Time passed on the plantation season by season; Thomas was well out of the habit of thinking in terms of precise dates on a calendar. He only knew today’s date because it was so soon after Christmas. He had not made a note of the day on which James had arrived.

“A Sunday,” James prompted.

Thomas did remember the first Sunday after James’s arrival. “The day that Stephen took you around the plantation,” he said. “You had not been here a week.”

“The very one,” said James. “But it was not until the evening that I knew we could not stay here.”

Thomas’s breath came out in a little hiss as the realisation came to him. He tried not to smile, but James looked so childishly disgruntled he could not help it. “When Yardsley came by.”

“To think,” James said, each syllable drenched in disgust. “To think I had come all this way for you, after doing all the things that I have done, to think I had walked away from all that to find you and I was finally … and to be summoned away by a fucking –” He sat and fumed for a moment. “Had I sword in hand, I would have run him through there and then.”

Thomas was certain James believed that to be true, but his own memory of that evening was a little different. When Yardsley had arrived, James had been near the end of his strength and quite unfit to fight anybody, let alone a trained guard; by the time he had returned from his conversation with Mr Oglethorpe, he had been at the very end of it and capable of doing no more than taking off his shoes and falling into bed. 

“The entire fucking next day I had to wait, shelling corn with two imbeciles who spoke of nothing all day but their breakfast, lunch and dinner and the beetle that they had caught in their cabin that morning. I have never had my patience so tried, in all my years.”

“You called it meditative.”

“I lied.”

“And now you are exaggerating.”

James tilted his head first one way then the other as he considered that, his exasperation replaced in a trice by ostentatiously measured consideration. “I am,” he allowed in the end. “That is true.”

“And here was I thinking you an honest man.”

“Were you now,” James said, sounding thoroughly amused. Thomas held his gaze, and the amusement slowly faded from James’s face. “There will be no clean escape,” he said. “Whatever happens, it will not be clean and you will not like it. You will wish it did not have to be this way, and I will wish it did not have to be this way. You have to be willing to come out of it a different man than you went in. Otherwise there is no hope for it.”

Thomas ran the back of his fingers down his right cheek and then the front down his left, thinking how novel James still found his beard and how little thought Thomas had given it for years, so accustomed he had become to wearing it. “I will not be a different man, whatever course my life may take,” he said, laying his hand back down on the table. “All things change, as they must, but the mind that directs me will always be my own.”

“You know what I mean,” James said.

“I do,” said Thomas. “I understand it and I accept it.”

“You will not understand it until you experience it,” James said darkly. “And perhaps still not for some time after.”

“I might.”

James’s attention was then apparently captured by the nervous twitching of the fingers of his right hand. He bowed his head and did not look at Thomas at all.

“There has been trouble at the mill once before,” Thomas said. This reaction of James’s told Thomas something of why he had remained silent on the point of escape until Thomas himself had raised it; Thomas would remember that, but he did not need to dwell on it now. There was little to be gained in discussing what Thomas might or might not understand, what changes he might or might not undergo and how that might or might not align with James’s own experiences. “They will suspect it might come there again. It is why you have been let nowhere near it and why I no longer am so, now you are here.”

James raised his head, though he fidgeted still. 

“There is a road out of the plantation from the mill,” Thomas continued. “Sometimes business is staged there rather than at the house. There is also the potential for escape out of the back of the plantation, though anyone who did so would have nowhere to go but into Indian territory, and there is nothing for them there. The local people have a very good relationship with Mr Oglethorpe, and I am certain they would turn anyone over to him who they suspected had escaped from here.”

“So best to leave by the front gate,” James said, tracing shapes on the surface of the table with his middle finger. “Ideally with permission, but, in the absence of that, certainly after having given them more reason to let us go than to come after us.” He tapped his finger twice on the table and met Thomas’s eyes once more. “That is something I particularly wish to speak with you about.”

“Yes?”

“The more prisoners who leave this place, the more danger they will consequently be in,” James said. “If any substantial number are lost to him, Oglethorpe will need to replace them, and quickly. He will need to bring in more prisoners, who will necessarily be poorly trained, or employ free citizens, who will both be poorly trained and require payment, or he will need to purchase a number of slaves, which will be prohibitively expensive and mostly likely signal an end to his ambitions in reform and rehabilitation.”

“It is no secret that Mr Oglethorpe is vigorously opposed to the slave trade,” Thomas said. “He will not participate in it under any circumstances.”

“Good,” said James. “But drastic measures of some kind will be required in order to ensure the continuing business of this plantation if its workforce is significantly depleted. If pursuit of runaways is the most attractive of those options, then that is the option he will be forced to take. We must make it an option that is not worth his while.”

“You are suggesting that if we restrict the number who leave, his business will not be sufficiently disrupted to justify pursuit.”

“There are ways and means of dissuading him from doing so,” James said. “That is one. Hostages are another.”

“Surely he will be compelled to send men after us if we were to take hostages on the road.”

“If he is willing to risk their lives, then yes,” James said. “He may very well do so. Alternatively, he could accept an assurance that any hostages will be released once we are satisfied that we are not pursued. You could give him that assurance.”

“He will also have a special interest in pursuing any who flee into British territories,” Thomas said. “The secrecy of this plantation is as essential to its survival as the profitability of its business.”

“Thomas,” James said, his voice so low and delighted it bordered on obscene.

“A great many who would take their freedom would then intend to travel north,” Thomas continued in an attempt to distract himself from the way James was looking at him. “We, I think, do not wish to do so.”

“That is very nearly a devious thought.”

James was still looking at Thomas rather like he wished to consume him then and there. It was flattering, of course, but made it rather difficult to concentrate. “Is it?” Thomas said airily. “It seems a matter of simple logic to me.”

James let out a breathy little laugh, smiled and shook his head. “All right,” he said. “All right. How’s your French, then, if that is to be our plan? I assume you would prefer the French to the Spanish.”

“Ça fait longtemps que je ne l’ai –”

“Fine, then,” James interrupted. “Good.”

“How is yours?”

“Multiple of these plans can be prepared for at once, of course,” James said as though he had not heard Thomas at all. “We can make preparations with a view to taking advantage of any opportunity that arises, whether that be an opportunity to rise in open revolt, to take one or more hostages or to take advantage of any man we perceive as vulnerable to an offer of incalculable riches. If we are to have collaborators, they must be carefully chosen. One false step in that process sinks the entire venture before it begins. Certain names do come to mind, but I am confident of only a few of them. I have not known any of these people for very long.”

“I would be very interested to hear the names you are considering.” 

“If I told you, you would stay up all night thinking about them,” said James. “I think it is a conversation best left for tomorrow evening.”

“Do you think I will not stay up all night thinking about all we have talked of already?”

“I don’t think you will,” James said with iron resolve. “I do not intend to let you.”

“You know how to prevent it, do you?”

“Yeah,” James said, with the kind of grin no honest man could ever wear. “I do.”

Thomas blew out the candle and stood to meet James as he came around the table.


	18. A Story is Untrue - Day 34

There was nothing Thomas could do to block out either the man with the cough or the one who talked in his sleep on and off throughout the night, complaining of missing salt, of cracked plates and burned porridge, furious for some reason at his mother and swearing like a sailor all the while. As the night wore on the sounds seemed to come closer and closer, growing unnaturally loud in Thomas’s ears, and he could not sleep for any stretch of time without echoes of other such nights reverberating in his mind and forcing him back to wakefulness as the only means of escaping them. He had thought it one of those memories, a dream, when he woke the seventh or eighth time and heard someone not far from him sobbing quietly, muffled in the bedclothes. In the past, sometimes he had woken from a dream only to find himself caught in another, having to wake two or three more times before finally reaching true consciousness, and so he lay and simply waited to see what might happen next.

But then the coughing had started again, and Thomas had lain still for a few moments and determined that, yes, there was a man crying mere yards away from him here in the present day, not from across an ocean and a dozen years. Thomas thought it might be Louis Petcher, the young man from Edenton who had had his heart broken three days before Christmas and was now heading home again, shocked and inconsolable. 

Thomas bore him no ill will for his tears. He himself was no stranger to uncontrollable grief in the dead of night. He had certainly not considered the convenience of those around him when he had first arrived in Bethlem. No doubt he had kept others awake in that hellish place, disturbing them with the expressions of grief that he was powerless to diminish or resist. He had not been one for tears before Bethlem, and he had thought himself a sensible and a rational man because of it. He knew now, of course, that he had simply been fortunate never to have been injured deeply enough to draw them out of him. Once he had come to terms with that hurt over long and arduous weeks, once those tears had finally run dry, Thomas had thought it highly unlikely he could ever be so deeply hurt again.

Of course, in Bethlem he had been far from alone. Thomas could still bring to mind the face of the man who had cried every night and most of the days a few cells down from Thomas: a man at least fifteen years his senior with a patchy beard and wild black mane whose eyes were perpetually red, who spat more often than he spoke and flinched from anybody who came near to him. Weeping Tom, the men had called him; Thomas had never discovered his real name. Others had wailed and moaned, gnashed their teeth and screamed of a night-time, but Weeping Tom had, true to his name, cried every night through, quiet and consistent and utterly heartbreaking.

The man coughed, and coughed, and coughed again. Beside Thomas, in the bed they had no choice but to share, James gave a sleepy hum, rolled over onto his back and turned his head away, where he had previously been facing Thomas. He did not hear the man crying, or if he did, it did not bother him. It certainly did not wake him, as it did Thomas. James slept differently in a room shared with so many others than he did when the two of them were alone, but he was nowhere near as compromised by it as Thomas was. He still couldsleep, and did, and Thomas envied him for it with an intensity that grew each night.

Night after night after night they had done this en route from Amelia to Campbellton, and Thomas, who was neither superstitious nor given to pessimism as a rule, felt doom creeping up on him, each night drawing nearer and nearer, imperceptible by any sense but the one Bethlem had given him that had made its home in his heart, his bowels and the very back of his mind. The sleeplessness always came first, magnifying anything and everything that Thomas heard or felt or imagined in the night, and then, once he had been sufficiently worn down by it, the same sensations began to come over him in the daytime. He saw things differently and doubted that which he saw, trusted less and began to imagine grief and pain in others that he was unable to separate himself from. He slipped into a world of phantasm and catastrophe from which there was no escape without external assistance. He could resist it for a time, but once he had succumbed he did not know how to find his way out alone.

Thomas sought out James’s hand under the covers. If he was touching James, he would not fall. By the lightest of touches he reassured himself that he was not alone in this place, not by holding James’s hand but resting a hand against his wrist and feeling his pulse beat steadily against Thomas’s fingers. He could do little more than that in this room of a dozen men, five of whom had travelled with them all the way from Amelia and knew them both by name. If Thomas was being kept awake by the triumvirate of grief, illness and sleep-talk in the small and close room, so might any other man be, and anyone who was awake might also be watching.

To huddle up to James in his sleep would be one thing: one warm body unconsciously seeking another, innocent and unremarkable. To seek comfort in such a way with conscious intent, well, that was something a silent observer might take note of and remember, and who knew what comment he might make about it later and with whom he might think to share it. Thomas did not know these men, and he could not take the risk. The most important thing, the critical thing, was to not attract any attention of any kind so they could slip from these men’s memories as quickly as they would leave their company when their destination was reached. They must strive to be utterly unremarkable in every way. 

So Thomas faced James but lay apart from him, touched only his forearm and that only lightly.

But Louis Petcher still wept into his pillow, and on the other side of the room the coughing continued, erratic and unpredictable. It scratched at the inside of Thomas’s head like mice, like squirrels digging for their hidden treasures against exposed bone. The sleep-talking man – Joshua, Thomas recalled – began a diatribe against undercooked root vegetables that startled Thomas with both its intensity and inventiveness. One of the men sleeping in the bed next to Joshua swore and rolled over, the motion abrupt and frustrated. There was some kind of disagreement between him and his bedmate, a general rustling of bedclothes and shifting of weight, and then they were still again. Louis Petcher sniffed four times, sighed and was quiet. Thomas closed his eyes as tightly as he could and began to mentally recite the Greek alphabet, but his concentration was broken by Joshua declaring the turnip “Satan’s fucking vegetable” and he had to start over.

James rolled back over and slid one arm up over Thomas’s side, pulling him a little closer, then sank back into full sleep: unconscious, innocent, unremarkable. Thomas nestled closer while he had the chance to do so, focusing his mind on James’s breathing, slow and silent, plagued not by madness nor terror nor hopeless, unending despair. 

“There’s no fucking _salt_. Don’t tell me we’ve run out of fucking _salt_. Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

Thomas supposed he should count his blessings that this man Joshua seemed chiefly preoccupied with culinary matters and nothing so vile as his neighbours in Bethlem had dreamed of and spoken aloud as they did: of horrors perpetrated, horrors endured, horrors witnessed, imagined and coveted, depths of depravity Thomas could not have imagined or ever supposed to exist in the minds of men. Joshua’s discourse, aggravating and unsettling as it was, would not be giving Thomas nightmares of his own in nights to come. There was at least that.

Louis Petcher had been silent ever since at least one of the two men next to Joshua had revealed himself to be awake. Thomas thought perhaps he might sleep now in James’s embrace, with only the coughing and Joshua’s occasional utterances to tolerate, but he found he did not have the energy to make an effort to do so. Closing his eyes seemed to be just as formidable a task as opening them fully would be, as daunting as rising and facing the day. So he stared fuzzily at what little he could see of James’s face in the darkness, felt the weight of James’s arm over his ribs and wished he was lying closer, thought of James’s heart beating slowly and steadily mere inches away from his own.

He did not realise James was awake until he was waving a hand slowly in front of Thomas’s face, a blur of movement in the dim light of the morning. His arm was no longer draped over Thomas; Thomas felt shivery and shapeless. James shifted closer, touching Thomas’s chin lightly with the side of his finger, and then he took that finger away and pressed the whole hand against Thomas’s heart. No one was coughing, no one was crying and no one was cursing vegetables in their sleep, but men shifted here and there in their beds, beginning to rouse though only the barest touch of dawn had begun to peep through the window and the bell had not yet rung to signal breakfast. 

Thomas did not know where he had been. Asleep, perhaps, to have lost track of time so completely, but awake enough that his eyes had already been open, so that James had thought to draw his attention by the waving of a hand. It was those in-between states that Thomas feared more than any other, in which he feared he might forever become lost.

“Not here,” James said in a low rumble barely audible to Thomas’s ear. “Come.”

Thomas watched him sit up in bed then climb out of it, a soft, heavy shadow in the dark. James knelt down by their bed for a moment or two then stood up and turned to Thomas with a mass of clothing in his hands the details of which Thomas could not make out.

“The bell has not yet rung,” Thomas managed to say, whisper-soft, trying to divine James’s motivation, certain he was lacking some essential element of understanding that would enable him to follow the current course of events. James tossed the clothing onto the bed in front of Thomas, where just a moment ago he himself had been lying, and bent down again. Thomas fumbled with breeches and socks, half-asleep still, so keenly aware of himself and the disturbance he may be causing others by dressing in the dark that he failed to notice until he had finished dressing that James had vanished from the room. 

He sat on the bed for a moment, holding his coat in his hands, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and fished around for his boots. He focused his mind on the simple task of lacing them up in the darkness, his fingers following familiar paths where his eyes were of little use to him in distinguishing leather from lace. He stood up, pulled on his coat and looked over all the beds, packed tightly together. Only two men among them had the privilege of sleeping alone, though most were strangers to each other.

When he heard James coming back into the room, he turned around to see him. The light had grown enough, and James was standing close enough to the doorway that Thomas could see he was fully dressed, already carrying their snapsack over his shoulder and another, smaller bag in his other hand. “Ready?” he asked, voice low. Thomas tried to stand tall, intending to demand that James fully explain himself, but James was already out of sight, leaving Thomas to either follow him or stand stupidly in this room of half-asleep men, dressed and shod and with absolutely no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

James was waiting for him by the front door of the tavern, which he had opened, hat on and ready for departure.

“What have you –”

“We are taking another day,” James said. “Do not concern yourself. Let’s go before the bell rings and chaos claims this place.”

“Go where?” Thomas asked, though his legs had already decided to follow James as he walked out the door into the cold, dim morning. The nights had become significantly colder as they travelled further and further north – not yet below freezing but cold enough that Thomas was powerfully grateful for his warm woollen coat, ill-fitting as it was around his shoulders, and cold enough that one’s breaths came out in visible puffs of air.

“Away from here,” James said, indicating generally the tavern behind them and then striking out northward on the main road. 

Thomas was startled by a lurking figure by the corner of the building, but when he lifted his hat and wished them good morning Thomas realised it was the coach driver, Bart, who had been given the privilege of a tiny room of his own at the back of the building. He had what looked like a loaf of cornbread in his hand, partially eaten, which he waved at the two of them in an embarrassed sort of acknowledgement. “Don’t much like the slop,” he said. “You’re out early, you two. Bell’s not even rung.”

“We will not be going with you any further,” James said. “Other business.”

“Good morning,” Thomas said politely, thinking somebody at least should say it. 

“Good morning,” said James in firm farewell, and then he carried on down the road.

“You’re not here to help me with the horses?” Bart called out after him plaintively.

“Safe journey,” Thomas wished him, and took his leave.

There was not much of Campbellton, and they reached the edge of town within minutes. Here James stopped out into the middle of the road for a minute, looking east and west, standing still and wary like a deer searching for a scent on the breeze. He seemed to have come to the end of his plan. Thomas felt his head slowly clearing as he waited in the crisp open air and the growing morning light, still feeling sleepy and more than a little mystified but appreciating the first real moment of peace and quiet he’d had in days. James gave Thomas a brief look, glanced back into town and then stepped off the road, northeastward in direction, striding unhesitating into the lightly wooded countryside, the bare branches of the trees stark against the glowing orange sunrise. Thomas followed him, not catching up to walk by his side but following in his wake, relishing the quiet crunching of boots on fallen leaves and the absence of eyes and ears to observe him and mouths to plague and torment him. 

Soon enough Thomas heard the sound of running water up ahead and saw a dense line of trees along what he considered must be the bank of a river. He turned to look back the way they had come and could not see a trace of the town, nor any sign of the road, only woodland petering out into open land. When he turned back around, James was standing in that line of trees, his hand flat on the trunk of a tree at his head-height, looking downward. He turned his head to see Thomas standing and watching him, nodded to him and then climbed down and vanished from view.

Thomas hurried forward and stood where James had been, brushing the same tree trunk with his fingers and looking out over the river, its rolling waters considerably louder now that Thomas was standing among the trees. There was a fairly steep slope down to the edge of the river itself, which was fifty or sixty feet wide. Its water was slow-moving and clear and gradually turned from south-east to due east, toward the sun, which was now free from the horizon and slowly rising. James stood at the bend and waved for Thomas to join him, a silent and highly unorthodox siren drawing him ever onward. “I have not brought any beeswax,” Thomas called out to him. “Please do not sing.”

“ _Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise_ ,” James called back, and though Thomas was focused on the slightly slippery ground as he made his descent, he could hear James’s smile in the sound of his voice and felt his own lips curl in answer. He walked along by the water to join James, showing him the smile he had brought to Thomas’s face. James grinned at him, satisfied, and pointed to a spot further around the bend, where a cluster of rocks sat by the water. There was a grassy patch of level ground just above them, divided diagonally by a large fallen branch and backed by a very steep rise to the tree line. “There,” he said. 

The river was cool and clear and Thomas wanted nothing more than to stand in it up to the waist, facing upriver, and let the water wash away everything he was carrying with him that he surely did not need to carry after all this time. He told himself that James would not like it if he did so. James would say that the water was too cold and that it did not properly warm up in these parts until well into the morning. He would say he wanted to be a partner to Thomas, not his nursemaid to attend to him through the pneumonia he would no doubt instantly contract if he were to walk into that river now.

Yes, Thomas thought. It was James’s fault that Thomas decided to climb up and sit comfortably on cool grass by the riverside and not subject himself to deep and frigid running water this early on a winter morning. James was a very unreasonable man.

He settled himself on the grass and leaned back against the log, exhaling deeply and watching his breath slowly dissipate into the air. James sat by his side, placing their snapsack and the second, smaller bag on his other side. He drew out his pistol and set it carefully down by his feet before leaning back in conscious or unconscious imitation of Thomas. He took off his hat and tossed it next to his gun. Thomas looked along the north riverbank, which was rockier than their side by far and did not have such a climb to reach ground level.

“How do you feel?” James asked after a while.

“Frayed,” said Thomas, looking over the river with his eyes unfocused, searching in vain for a word, any single word that could explain it all. “Uneasy.”

“Was it something back there?”

Thomas turned his head to look at James, who sat beside him and watched him closely with an attentiveness and a patience in his countenance that Thomas had not seen there before but immediately trusted. Thomas had not wanted to discuss any of this with James, not when everything about him was still so raw, his wounds were so exposed and he was still learning to express his own pain. When Thomas had touched James on that first night in Augusta, in their private room, James had wept and wept long into the night, inconsolable despite every effort Thomas had made. Thomas’s heart had been broken that night and remade itself anew, and he had sworn as he held him close that he would never do anything to add to James’s burdens, that his would be a healing hand and never one to inflict pain.

But James did seem more familiar now than he had been before with offering care and comfort to others, and Thomas knew from personal experience the fulfilment and the healing that could derive from such a thing. If that was any part of what James needed, not only the receiving of care but also the giving of it, who was Thomas to deny him? And yet the reluctance persisted in him, and he could not chase down its source. “I do not like to remember it,” he said uneasily. “It is not salutary.”

A touch of amusement showed in James’s steady reserve. “You did not think much of that answer when it was mine.”

“I do not think much of it even now,” Thomas confessed.

“And yet you deploy it.”

“I do.”

“I suppose I am not really able to claim moral superiority in this instance,” said James. “I have argued in bad faith as much as anybody in order to achieve my own ends.”

Of course, that forced Thomas to either admit he was arguing in bad faith and continue to do so regardless, or to abandon that defence entirely. James had had a great many years to hone his innate deviousness in a world of rogues and cut-throat competition, and Thomas suspected he had only been exposed to the very beginning of it thus far.

“It is the weeping,” Thomas said, “and the coughing, and the man who spoke of nothing but cookery in his sleep. It is sleeping so close to so many for so many nights on end.”

“It brings it back to you,” James said softly.

Thomas rubbed his forehead and watched the water flow past. “I was not there for so very long,” he said, “and I was treated better than most.”

“But by no means were you treated well,” James said, his voice as cool as the river.

“I truly do not wish to speak of it,” Thomas told him. “There are other things far more worth remembering. Things of value.”

“He knew who I was when I killed him,” said James. “He knew what it was for.”

Thomas closed his eyes as he felt every night of poor sleep he had had in the past fortnight catch up to him in one fell swoop. “Though I am not dead, as it turns out.”

“I would have hunted him down for no more than this one moment of pain he has caused you,” said James, still speaking evenly and comfortably. “I would take his head from his shoulders for Miranda’s sake alone. I have no regrets on that score.”

“I have not slept well these past four days,” Thomas said, matching James’s honesty with his own, too weary in body and soul to engage at all with what James had said. “Last night was the worst of them all.”

“I am in no hurry to go anywhere,” James said, stretching his legs out a little straighter in front of him.

“We never did go for walks in the countryside,” Thomas mused. “No rendezvous by the river.”

James pressed his shoulder to Thomas’s, leaning against him just hard enough that Thomas had to lean back in order to remain upright. His head was heavy and his eyes burned. If he fell asleep, he would bring an end to this moment that James had given him, the peace and the gentleness of an empty winter’s morning as one year drew to its end and a new one began to draw breath.

“By the twelfth rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen before noon on Christmas Day I had rather tired of them all as well,” James said, and Thomas heard the words hum in his chest as he said them.

“Its quality had improved a great deal by the end of the day.”

“Mmm,” said James. “By the sixth hundredth rendition it had become almost bearable.”

Thomas thought to hum the opening notes, just to see what James would do, but the thought did not seem to translate from his mind to his chest, which remained quiet and still as Thomas felt sleep slowly spread through him, as the sun melts the frost.

He woke to the sound of a page turning in very close proximity to his ear, and he lifted his head off James’s shoulder before he had realised it was James’s shoulder he had been sleeping on. He felt a sleepy regret as soon as the realisation came to him, and he wondered if James would say anything if Thomas dropped his head back down and closed his eyes once more, or if he would remain silent while Thomas slipped quietly back to sleep. 

James put a finger in the book he had in his lap – the Bradstreet volume – and half-closed it. Thomas looked at the book, noted the quality of the light falling onto it and glanced upward. The sun was nearly directly overhead, and though it did not hold much warmth at this time of year, it was hot enough that Thomas would be more comfortable without his heavy woollen coat. James had not taken off his own coat, and now that Thomas looked at him he could see a decided flush to his cheeks. 

Hours, it had been.

 _I love you_ , Thomas thought. _God help me, I love everything you are._

Thomas raised a hand and turned James’s face toward him. “I love you,” he said. He watched James’s face soften and smile and then leaned in to kiss him, though his mouth was still dry and stiff from sleep. He registered James laying the book to one side, turning toward Thomas and leaning back, inviting him to come closer, to hover over him and –

“Here?” Thomas said, half-hoping James would say, _Yes, here, of course here,_ and pull Thomas in toward him. Terrified, if James did say that, that Thomas would gladly go along with it.

What James did was lean back on two hands and shake his head regretfully. “No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

Thomas had half a mind to convince him otherwise and to begin by divesting him of that highly unnecessary coat.

“People have passed by this morning,” said James, still leaning back on that angle, tantalisingly close. “Two young boys very nearly set up to fish just over there.” He shifted his weight onto one hand to point out across the river, and while Thomas had his head turned around he slid back and righted himself so Thomas had no choice but to settle back down by the log, take off his coat and temper his disappointment.

James took off his own coat and draped it on the log beside him. Thomas only remembered that they had not eaten breakfast when James produced the smaller bag he had brought from the tavern and pulled out of it roughly sliced bread and ham and a limp handful of cabbage.

“My grandfather would read me liturgy over Christmastide, if my father was from home,” said James, assembling the three ingredients into a pile and passing the result to Thomas. “Do you know what is read on the twenty-seventh of December?”

“I have already admitted to you I would not make a convincing Catholic,” Thomas said, eyeing the ham closely before folding the bread and taking a bite. His stomach growled, and he took another.

“That is not what I am saying,” said James. He put a slice of ham between two slices of bread and disdained the cabbage completely. “I am asking you if you know what verses are read on the feast day of St John the Apostle, being today.”

“John, I should think,” said Thomas.

James smiled, delight and mischief in his eyes. “Genesis,” he said. “ _And God said let there be light, and there was light._ Though your recital was not quite how I learned it as a boy.”

Thomas thought back to what he knew of James’s early life in Padstow: a young motherless boy living with his grandfather whom he loved dearly, who prayed silently and secretly that his father would never come home from the sea and who, before long, was granted that wish. So much James had told him; so much more Thomas could imagine. He pictured this boy, red-haired and pink-cheeked, huddled close to the fire in the persistent cold of a Cornish winter as his grandfather read from the Holy Book on Christmastide, committing sacred and serious things to memory that he already knew he had to conceal from the world if he and his family were to be safe, traditions and rituals that he would by necessity turn away from later in life but never, apparently, fully forget.

“And John, of course, yes,” said James. “ _Peter turned about and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, which also leaned on his breast at supper_.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “I am familiar with the verse.”

James’s lips quirked, complicity shining in his eyes. “I’m sure you are.”

“I was not raised to think much of Christmas,” Thomas said, gesturing for James to pass him what was left of the food. “My father called it a nonsense, my mother a blasphemy.”

“Yes,” said James, keeping one slice of ham for himself and giving Thomas the rest. “Miranda mentioned to me she had to teach you the proper way to go about Christmas.”

Thomas smiled. “So she did,” he said, piling cabbage and ham upon one slice of bread and topping it with another. “On the first Christmas after we married she threw a small party of her intimate friends and mine, to play cards and sing carols and share her famous spiced wine. It went well enough that she repeated it the next year, and the year after, until we had fifty coming to our house on Christmas morning the year before you and I met, a good number of those having turned up without invitation.”

“I heard something of that when I was assigned as your liaison,” said James. “Whispers, mostly. There was some great scandal about the Hamilton Christmas party that year, but nobody would say precisely what.”

“That was the year my mother stopped calling Miranda a silly, useless girl and decided she was a wretched, irreligious …” Thomas could not bring himself to share the exact word his mother had used, instead letting the sentence fade into the rushing of the river. “Miranda had a very close friendship with the second son of Baron Wharton,” he said, “and he had not held his wine that day.”

James nodded, chewing on the last of his ham. “They had a merry Christmas, then.”

“They did indeed.”

“Our first year in Nassau I was determined to be home for Christmas,” James said, licking his empty fingers and leaning back once more against the log. “I knew how Miranda loved it, and I had promised her I would return by Christmas Eve. We were making good time, but then we happened on a prize on our way back to port. Spanish merchant ship, the _Vesta_. A few wanted to leave her be and return to Nassau without delay – those who were wounded or weary or had their own woman to return to. But it was put to the vote, and we joined pursuit immediately thereafter.”

“How close was the vote?”

“There is not a good deal of Christian sentimentality to be found on a pirate crew, even among those who still call themselves Christian,” James said by way of answer. “Then there are the African, the Jewish, the heathen, the godless and the heretic, whose votes are as good as any.”

“Not close, then,” Thomas said.

“Not close,” said James. “Not in the least. Three men were injured when we took the _Vesta_ , one nearly fatally, but her cargo was rum, wine and whisky and the crew voted to give Ruabon and Ashworth a double share, and Billings triple, in the Christmas spirit, so I’m sure you can imagine there was not much in the way of complaint when I exhorted them to sail us back, the _Walrus_ and the _Vesta_ both, as though the Armada itself was on our tail, in order to return by Christmas. I had made a promise to Miranda; they were desperate to partake of the spoils as soon as could be.”

“And you succeeded in keeping that promise?” Thomas guessed, fairly confident in the answer. James, once he had set his mind on a thing, would stop at nothing to achieve it.

“I do not remember my return to her,” said James, frowning as though the memory might come back to him as he told the story. “I do not remember arriving back in Nassau. I remember waking on Christmas morning with a splitting headache to conversation in the next room and thinking I must have been ill with a fever or been knocked on the head much harder than I had realised in the boarding, or else I was still asleep and dreaming, because I swore I was hearing Miranda entertaining Hal Gates in our house.”

“Gates,” said Thomas. “Your quartermaster?”

“My quartermaster,” James confirmed. “He had never been to my home before and never met Miranda at all, as far as I was aware, and yet here they were on Christmas morning discussing the celebration or otherwise of Christmas throughout the colonies, the ’47 riots in Canterbury and religious practice among pirates. Of course, Miranda was the one discussing these things; I could tell Hal suspected some kind of joke at his expense, but he was never quite sure enough or rude enough to accuse her of it. He kept saying he’d come to speak to the captain. She insisted I was sleeping and he was not to wake me. She told him as a respectable Puritan woman she held no truck with Christmas and highly disapproved of the gifts I had brought back for her from the prizes we had taken.”

“A respectable Puritan woman,” Thomas repeated, trying to think of any description that could possibly describe Miranda less accurately.

“That is how she presented herself to Nassau,” James said. “It was a wise and politic choice and one she took great delight in, in the beginning.”

“I can imagine,” said Thomas.

“Anyway, I listened to them for a time,” James said. He rubbed the side of his head, above his right ear, and grimaced in remembered pain. “I had most certainly sustained some kind of injury to the head that had escaped my notice at the time and could only benefit from further rest, and I did not want to ruin Miranda’s Christmas by prematurely cutting short her entertainment.”

“And your own.”

James grinned. “And my own. You will not be surprised to learn that Miranda extracted a good deal of information out of Gates as to his character, the history of the island, my comportment as captain and the state and spirit of my crew while revealing absolutely nothing about herself that was the least bit true. But once I judged he was at the end of his capacity to deal with her, I thought I should probably go and find out the reason he had come.” He snorted to himself and shook his head. “The sight of Hal Gates and his great bald brick of a head drinking tea out of one of Miranda’s teacups, fielding questions as to the literary history of the brigand as folk hero and the political manoeuvring of Sir Francis Drake…”

“What were Mr Gates’s thoughts on the literary history of the brigand as folk hero?” Thomas asked.

“ _Load of crap_ ,” James said in what Thomas could only assume was supposed to be an imitation of Mr Gates’s voice. 

“Ah.”

“Well, that’s what he said to me about it afterward,” James said. “He begged ignorance at the time. He told Miranda that he could not read.”

“I imagine a ship’s quartermaster would be absolutely required to be literate,” said Thomas.

“They both knew full well that he was lying,” James said with a chuckle. “That was the beauty of it. Gates told me afterwards that he’d been wondering for months what kind of woman could ever bear to make her home with me, said he’d wondered more than once if I had her there against her will. He said now he had his answer.” James put the voice on again. “ _One just as fucking unmanageable as you_. He didn’t come to the house uninvited for three years after that. Miranda was very proud.”

“Why had he come in the first place?”

James’s expression soured. “To check on my welfare.”

“Why did he come three years later?”

“To check on my welfare.”

“He was a friend to you, then?”

“He was my quartermaster.” James sat and wrestled with himself for a few seconds. When he made the concession, it was heavy and reluctant. “And a friend.”

Thomas did not need to be told that James’s time with Mr Gates had ended badly; all the stories James had told him came to grief of some kind, and the expression on his face now told Thomas this was no exception. 

“We had a long run, he and I,” James said. “Longer than it had any right to be.” 

“How long?” Thomas asked.

James looked out over the river, regret plain on his face. “Ten years or thereabouts,” he said. “From my arrival in Nassau all the way to the _Urca de Lima_. He opposed me in the end. He did not agree with my vision for Nassau and the means by which I intended to achieve it. He was going to end it all.” He looked down at his hands and flexed them oddly. “And then, after him, there was Silver.”

 _I will tell you how many of my men I led to their deaths and how many I killed by my own hand,_ James had said. Thomas would not ask, and James would never tell him in so many words, but he had not forgotten. 

“It will always come down to this,” James said regretfully. “No story I can tell you has an ending you will like hearing. There is no avoiding it.”

“But your story has not come to an end,” Thomas said. “It continues here and now.”

James nodded slightly, then again more decisively. “We could take the room again,” he said. “Go back now, rest while it is empty. There may not be as many travellers tonight.”

It was a sensible enough suggestion, but Thomas saw no appeal in returning to that room, with its smell of too many men and Thomas’s memories of the night just passed. He would sooner sit by this river, James by his side, and remember that the world they lived in was so much more than the misery and anguish it had delivered them. There was peace here, and tranquility, for those who resolved to find it, and now that he and James had done so, Thomas was not willing to let it go so quickly.

“I am going to stand in the water,” he said, leaning over to untie his bootlaces.

“Are you,” James said, bemused.

“I have not done such a thing for more than twenty years,” said Thomas. “So yes, I am.” He removed his boots and his socks and walked down to the water’s edge, looking for a spot where his footing would be firm. James climbed down after him, feet bare and pistol tucked into his belt.

“Go on,” James said. He raised a hand in readiness to catch Thomas should he slip or should the strength of the river be more than expected.

Thomas stepped his right foot in, knee-deep, and felt steady rocks beneath his toes. He followed with his left foot, standing tense for a moment as he braced himself against the flow of the river and then relaxing as he became accustomed to it. He walked a little further in, letting the water rise over his knees and halfway up his thighs before turning to face upstream and stopping again. It took energy to hold his position against the pressure of the water, but it was like leaning his shoulder against James as James leaned into him. There was a comfort in it, and a mutuality, and satisfaction.

There was surely no novelty for James in standing in water; Thomas thought he had probably had enough of it to last him a lifetime. He stood at the bank near to Thomas but did not enter.

“I know you are set on avoiding the coast hereafter,” Thomas said to him. “But skilled boatmen are needed also on rivers, and there is no shortage of those in this country.”

“Let’s not discuss it now,” James said, looking up and down the river. “Let’s not discuss any of that today.”

“You propose drawing a line,” said Thomas, feeling his heart swell with delight and doing his best to sound only quietly, calmly pleased. 

“I do.”

Thomas glanced upward; the sun was at its midpoint in the sky. “Then whatever shall we do to pass the time?”

“Whatever you like,” James said. “Whatever strikes your fancy.”

In the shared coach from Amelia time had moved interminably slowly, with each hour on the road seeming double or even triple its real length. Thomas could only hope this afternoon ahead of him would pass in a like fashion, with long seconds adding up to long minutes adding up to long, long hours. How badly he had needed this escape, and how grateful he was that James had given it to him.

“How long do you intend to stand there for?” James asked. 

“A while,” Thomas replied.

“All right. I’ll be up there when you’re done.”

Thomas nodded. “Thank you.” He turned back to look out over the river, picturing James clambering back up to their ledge, settling down and taking up his book again. Then he let all of it go, everything that had happened one minute, one month, one year, ten, twenty years ago, and let himself simply exist as one man alive and well in the world. The sun was warm on his shoulders, the air was clean in his lungs, the water was cold against his legs and the rocks were hard under his feet. Thomas was alive, he was here, and he was free.


	19. A Story is True - Day 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At Chapter 19 we're officially past halfway, so I want to say thanks very much again to everyone who's reading, commenting and leaving kudos! Onwards and upwards!

When Mark Higgins had come over to where Thomas, James, Stephen Mattner and John Lawrence were eating dinner, no small number of heads had turned their way. When Mark had requested a word in private with James and James had grudgingly agreed, slamming his chair back and leaving his dinner half-eaten, a low murmur had gone around the room. John had given Thomas a pitying look but said nothing about it, and their conversation had continued in James’s absence.

Four times now Mark had approached James, and four times he had been humoured for a time and then dismissed. As James’s patience with him grew visibly shorter, Mark had only become more determined in his efforts. He had not been the same, people were beginning to say, since last year’s Indian threat, when he had been one of the men kept in reserve as a potential combatant to defend the plantation, if it should come to that. That threat had not materialised, as the conflict had not ended up threatening either the plantation or the township of Savannah, but where most had sighed in relief and slept easier at night, Mark had only become more surly as he returned to his normal duties, dissatisfied with his lot as he never had been before.

This was what the men were beginning to say, and so it was little wonder that every time Mark so much as looked at James, let alone spoke to him, everyone in the vicinity turned their ears and eyes in his direction. James made no secret of his distaste for whatever interest Mark had taken in him and George Stevenson had been heard trying to dissuade him from it. 

Today was the first time Mark had requested James’s ear so publicly and the first time he had done so when James had been in Thomas’s company. There was a fixity of purpose about him today, his dark eyes smouldering under their heavy brows and grim resolve in the set of his jaw. James had barely glanced at Thomas before stalking outside for Mark to follow him, evidently not willing to have words with Mark in front of such a sizeable audience or risk causing a scene by flatly denying his request. 

Thomas gave it twenty minutes before he went after them. He was not surprised when several others rose to leave as he did, nor by the increased volume of conversation in the hall that he heard as he left. 

There were a few men milling around at the three-way fork in the road at the beginning of the prisoners’ neighbourhood; Thomas did not have to look very hard to see what it was they were pretending not to watch. James and Mark stood a little way off the rightmost path, arguing in voices far too low to be heard from thirty yards away. Further along the path Thomas saw Jacob Gussett and Harry Parfitt standing out the front of their own cabin, one down from Ned and Tracy’s cabin and two from James and Thomas’s at the end of the row. Most crucially, Bradford and Greene were stationed near the overseer’s lodgings, attentive but maintaining their position, and Adams had just come out of the privy and was making his way over.

“Is he trying to get himself killed, keeping on doing this?” William Carver said to Thomas when he saw him approaching. He waved an emphatic arm toward James and Mark.

“Trying to get Flint killed, more likely,” said Billy Cobden. “That’s what’ll happen if things go bad. You’ve got to go up there, Thomas, and straighten things out.”

When Thomas began to walk closer, the crowd that was gathering edged up behind him, so he stopped after only a few steps. Nothing good could come from crowding what was already a tense conversation.

James stepped backward and away from Mark, but Mark reached out and grabbed his forearm, holding him where he was. James went perfectly still and said something Thomas could not hear; Mark slowly let go of him.

“I will not tell you again,” James said, his voice suddenly carrying where before it had been pitched low. “My answer is no, and it will remain no. That is the end of it.”

Mark appeared to implore James then, but his voice was still too quiet to be heard. As he spoke, he looked a little nervously past James at the crowd that was gathering. 

James glared daggers at him, to all appearances still not aware of their audience. “I came here for Thomas, Higgins, and well you know it. For a dozen years of my life he has been taken from me, and I will not risk his life or mine because you think it is my duty to do it for the sake of all the rest of you. If you cannot do it without me, then you cannot do it. The fault for that lies with you, not me. I have been very, very patient with you – far more patient than you deserve.”

“This place has worked on you faster than any other man,” said Mark, leaning forward and bristling, careless now of whoever might be watching. The two of them were of a height, and though Mark was a great deal burlier, James looked solid and unmovable. “It has made a coward out of you – a coward out of Captain Flint, for fuck’s sake, who had every colonial power in the New World trembling in its boots. Captain Flint left Charles Town fire and ash after the governor there had him on trial in chains. The man was fearless, relentless and invincible. What the fuck have you done with him?”

“I have retired him,” James said flatly. “I have put him away.”

Mark shook his head in sorrow and disgust. “What you have is not love,” he said. “He does not bring you strength. He has made you less than you were. He has fucking poisoned you.”

James moved with a sudden furious energy that made Thomas startle even as he had been expecting it. Mark was not taken by surprise and did not so much as flinch; he ducked forward under James’s flying fist, and James stumbled back as their bodies collided with a resounding thud, before throwing Mark off him and raising his fists once again.

“Here we fucking go,” someone behind Thomas said. Bradford and Greene were now marching briskly over from the south-east and Adams from the north-east. Most of the men standing near Thomas inched backwards; Billy stayed by his side, while George Stevenson and Louis Tramontin, who had only just arrived, stepped up to join them.

Mark and James were more or less evenly matched. Both were trained to fight, and both knew how to temper their anger with discipline. After a brief flurry of swings, blocks and deflections Mark landed the first telling blow, a knock to James’s nose that immediately drew blood. 

James did not hesitate. Instead of retreating or taking a moment to clear his head, he surged forward and spat a stream of red at Mark, who turned away to protect his face and immediately had James’s hands around his neck. Adams was closest and shouted out a warning, but James slammed his head into Mark’s with a sickening crack and stood over him where he fell.

“You talk to me again, I’ll kill you,” he promised, blood flowing freely from his nose. He did not stand quite steadily; it looked like a great effort for him to focus his gaze. “I’ll split your skull clean in two, and then you will know how weak love has made me.”

He stepped back then, wobbling a little, and appeared for the first time to notice the crowd that had gathered and the guards who were fast approaching. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, staining it red. “The next man who comes to me with a proposition or a suggestion or an idea can expect the same,” he announced, spitting yet more blood onto the ground and stepping back further to allow the guards access to Mark, who lay flat on his back on the ground, holding one hand to his head.

Bradford and Greene hauled Mark to his feet and held him upright between them, cursing him for a fool as they did so. The look Mark gave James was dazed and devastated and very nearly tragic. James did not even look at him, at his own blood spattered across the side of Mark’s head and staining his shirt. He stood aside dispassionately and felt at his nose, pinching it to attempt to stem the flow. Adams watched him closely but made no move to approach him.

Voices came from behind Thomas instructing all onlookers to disperse. Billy clapped Thomas on the shoulder and left. Thomas left George and Louis where they were and went to James, placing one hand along the side of his head, careful to avoid any of the blood spattered in his beard.

“I take it you gave him some idea of what to say,” James murmured. His eyes flickered to Mark and then back to Thomas.

There was already the beginning of a red mark on James’s brow where it had collided with Mark’s. Thomas felt compelled to touch it, as gently as he could; the only sign of pain James exhibited was a flicker around his eyes. “No,” Thomas said just as quietly. “I’m afraid that was all of his own initiative.”

James shook his head a little and Thomas took his hand away, watching in concern at the discomfort it had plainly caused him. He heard footsteps behind him approach and then stop a little way away.

“Surely there are other ways to defeat a man in combat than by knocking your own head against his as hard as you are able,” Thomas chided, not bothering any more to keep his voice particularly low. This would do very well as a lead-in to the script they must now follow for the benefit of whatever guard was now in earshot. 

“When fighting a man ten years younger than oneself, one takes the first opportunity that presents itself,” James said, holding a hand once more to his nose.

“You should not be fighting at all,” said Thomas, watching blood drip down James’s hand. “You know it was not wise.”

“I’m sorry. I know.” There was regret in James’s eyes, and though Thomas knew it was not genuinely born of these events, he felt the truth of it somewhere deep in his chest. Thomas sighed and shook his head. He tucked the hair that was beginning to grow over James’s ear behind it again. He had intended to do the same for the other ear, but James caught his hand and pushed it back down again. “You are ruining my image,” he said. 

“Good,” Thomas returned, but he desisted. 

James turned his head to watch as Bradford and Greene began to escort Mark away from the cabins. “He should have fucking listened the first time.”

Mark had shaken off the guards to stand unsupported, and as he started down the path he shot James a look of such intense bitterness and disappointment that Thomas had to wonder if he had perhaps missed his calling on the stage. Thomas had expected James to perform his role to perfection, but he had been less certain of Mark’s ability to do the same. He certainly should not have been. 

This capacity for emotional subterfuge, for concealment and for misdirection, Thomas considered, was something held in common by most men who lived their lives in hiding, especially those who had done so from a young age. That was why Thomas had been so bad at it when it had mattered most. He did the best he could now, holding James’s bloody nose in mind as he glared back at Mark, thinking of how this pretence degraded and demeaned them all. Mark flinched and looked away, veering sideways as he did, only to be pushed back on course by Greene.

“McGraw,” said Miles, who was the one standing behind Thomas. “Back to the washhouse to clean up this shit, then we’ll see what Mr Hawkes wants to do with you.”

James took his bloody hand off his bloody nose and fixed Miles with a very unimpressed look. “He came to me,” he protested.

“Don’t fucking argue with me,” said Miles.

“He should be seen to,” Thomas said, turning to face Miles. “There’s a great deal of blood.”

“He’ll live,” said Miles. “McGraw, now.”

“All right,” James said, tilting his head forward so he would not drip any more blood on his clothes. “Can I have something to –”

“Just move,” Miles said wearily. James glared at him, but there was nothing of rebellion in it that Thomas could see – only pain, weariness and plain old irritation. He pulled the edge of his sleeve over his hand and used it to clutch his nose then followed where Miles led him.

Of the crowd that had gathered, only those who resided in this area had been allowed to remain, and they all stood under the watchful eyes of Cameron and Dunstan. Ned strolled up to Thomas without a care, offering him a wide, friendly smile. “Well isn’t that guy fucking crazy,” he commented, as though upon the weather.

“No,” Thomas said shortly. “He is not.”

Ned’s smile vanished. “You didn’t even ask me which one I meant,” he complained. 

Tracy walked toward them and then went past, and Thomas gladly turned to go with him. 

“I have never seen a man get hit that hard and not even notice,” Ned said, hurrying to catch up. “No wonder he was never bested.”

“James himself will tell you he has been bested on any number of occasions,” Thomas said, preferring to discuss that than madness in any of its forms. “And I can assure you that when he is hit, he notices.”

“That guy is fucking crazy, right?” Ned called out to Jacob and Harry, who were still lingering out the front of their cabin. 

“Which one?” the two of them said together, wincing as soon as they had done so. They had used to claim they disliked each other; after living together without incident for what must be at least five years now, they rarely bothered with it any more.

“See?” Ned said to Thomas. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Thomas did not care at all about whatever argument it was Ned thought he was making. At this point, he was beyond glad that he and James had decided not to bring Ned into their confidence at this early stage, however enthusiastic he would certainly have been. “I have been in Bethlem,” he reminded Ned. “I know what can become of a man labelled mad when he is not. I have seen men who truly had lost their minds. Mark is desperate, nothing else.”

“Desperately fucking stupid, yeah,” said Ned. “Reminds me of that runt Mortimer. Whatever has become of him? I haven’t seen him for weeks.”

“Higgins is a good deal older and should know better than this,” said Tracy, giving Thomas an opaque look. “I thought he knew much better than this.”

“Any man can be incited to extreme action, if the conditions are right,” said Thomas.

“Mmm,” said Tracy. “Very true.”

“Picking a fight with James Flint is extreme, all right,” said Ned with a chuckle. Thomas did not bother to correct him. James seemed to have become both Mr McGraw and James Flint during his few months on the plantation, and as long as he was never called captain, Thomas would not disturb the equilibrium that had been reached in that respect. “Now there’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing if I ever saw one. I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling.”

“ _The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock_ ,” said Thomas as they all stopped outside Ned and Tracy’s cabin.

“I beg your pardon?” said Ned, blinking.

“Isaiah.”

Ned rolled his eyes. “When he comes back, maybe remind your man about turning the other cheek.” When Thomas offered him no reaction, he turned around and went in.

Over the last couple of months, Tracy had come to know James perhaps better than anyone on the plantation but Thomas. He looked closely at Thomas now, and Thomas could tell there was a theory he wished to present. “Let us say nothing of it,” said Thomas, “as there is nothing to be said.”

Tracy pursed his lips doubtfully and then nodded. “You’ll tell me if there ever is something to be said, of course.”

“I will.”

There was something of the disapproving schoolmaster in Tracy’s frown, but so there often was. “I don’t wholly disagree with Ned, you know,” he said. “Whatever you are all doing, I hope to God you have thought it through.”

“We are not doing anything,” Thomas said.

“No, of course not,” said Tracy. “Good night, Thomas.”

Thomas walked the short distance to his and James’s cabin alone, feeling something of a cheat for being able to do so unwounded, unbloodied and unchaperoned while Mark and James were required to suffer for their part in the plan. Mark had risked everything with a willingness that had startled Thomas. On the eve of the new year he had told Thomas, _It’s a lot easier to lose a fight than win one, you know_ , and he had smiled at the thought of it. _If you get us out of here, Thomas, I’ll wait on the two of you hand and foot for a whole year around._

The stools were still sitting out the front of his and James’s cabin from when they had woken early in the morning and gone outside to sit and watch the day begin, not knowing then that today would be the day Mark elected to escalate matters. Thomas went and sat in James’s place, taken by a sudden desire to try to see through his eyes for a moment, as he was not here to do it himself. He thought of James sitting there that morning with Thomas beside him and wondered how large his own presence loomed in James’s mind, if he was as constantly, thoroughly distracted by Thomas’s presence as Thomas always was by his. If James had been here alone waiting for Thomas, would he too remain out the front of the cabin so he would not feel Thomas’s absence inside it? If he so decided, would he then sit in Thomas’s place in an effort to be as near to him as may be?

Thomas could only laugh at himself, then, for engaging in such nonsensical reflections. James was far too sensible for such idle wondering and far too practical to spend his time thinking about such things when there was a rebellion to be plotted and planned.

But all thoughts of laughter fled from Thomas when it occurred to him how much of the past decade James might have spent either resisting such a train of thought or having succumbed to it. How many efforts had he made, in quiet moments, to will himself nearer to a ghost? There was nothing practical or sensible about grief, and James was not so far removed from his. When set against the twelve years that had come before it, two months was barely a blink. Thomas had blinked, and James had appeared before him. James had blinked, and all the things he had known to be true had fallen out from underneath him; he had had only Thomas to hold onto to keep himself from drowning.

The sun had just slipped below the horizon when Henry Hawkes came up the road. He sat on the empty stool beside Thomas, where Thomas had sat that morning, looking weary and frustrated. Now came the time for Thomas to play what might be the most vital part of all. He thought of the force of the blow Mark had landed on James’s nose and remembered the sickening crack as their heads had collided. He would not let all of that count for nothing. He would play his part here, and he would convince Mr Hawkes of everything he needed to be convinced of.

“What were they fighting about, Thomas?” Mr Hawkes asked without preamble.

“I do not wish to make any comment on it,” Thomas told him. “I believe the matter can now be considered settled.”

“Thomas,” said Mr Hawkes wearily, “this is an extremely serious matter. It is an issue to me if my men are fighting. It is a concern to me that Mr McGraw is so easily provoked to violence.”

“To my knowledge there have been two incidents in all James’s time here,” Thomas said, irked by the characterisation. “The provocation he has faced has by no means been limited to those two incidents, and he has not been properly protected when he has been so provoked. It was determined that he was not at fault when he struck Joe Williams. His forbearance has surpassed that which could reasonably have been expected of him. The accusation is unfounded.”

“All I am asking is what he and Higgins were discussing that brought them to blows,” Mr Hawkes said. “I seek to inform my own understanding, not to place evidence before a judge. When you have had these sorts of conversations with me before, I believe they have led to better outcomes for everyone involved than if I were left to guess.” 

“I believe you already know what they were discussing.”

“I have heard some accounts,” Mr Hawkes allowed. “They have not been consistent. Apart from Messrs McGraw and Higgins, you are in the best position to shed light on the incident.” When Thomas still hesitated to speak, he leaned forward on the stool and rested his elbows on his knees, the calm friendliness now replaced by grim intent. “If you are not forthcoming, that will have to be part of the report I make to Mr Oglethorpe. I would prefer that it was not.”

Thomas did not have to feign the fire behind his eyes at that. Ever since he had pledged himself to their escape, ever since he had decided that liberty was his right and his entitlement and committed to seeing it done, he had become acutely aware of every way, both minor and major, that he was controlled and coerced by those who had been granted authority over him. Even those he liked, Mr Hawkes included, would use whatever power they had at their disposal to achieve their ends. Of course, that had always been the case; it was just that those ends and Thomas’s now stood in absolute contrast with each other, where they had before been quite neatly aligned.

“I was not party to the majority of their conversation,” he said. “I will not speculate on its content beyond that which I know.”

Mr Hawkes nodded, seemingly unconcerned by Thomas’s displeased tone. “That is for the best,” he said. “I have heard quite enough speculation about it already.”

“Very well.” Thomas thought back to the story he, James and Mark had settled on and sought to tell as much truth as he could within its boundaries. He was not a fraction of the liar James was and must not try to be. 

“Tell me only what you know,” said Mr Hawkes. “Help me to understand it.”

“For a little while now, Mark has been approaching James and attempting to speak with him in private,” Thomas said.

“I’m aware of that.”

Thomas bit back the response he wished to make and instead took a moment to refine it before speaking. “If you do not wish me to tell you things you are already aware of, then you will need to tell me what those things are,” he said. “I cannot divine them from the air.”

Not much in Mr Hawkes’s expression changed, but Thomas saw a smile in it anyway. “For how long would you say he has been doing this?”

“For two weeks, perhaps. Some time early in the new year. I could not say exactly.”

Mr Hawkes nodded Thomas on.

“At first I thought it politeness,” Thomas said. “Their first meeting was not overly friendly, and I thought Mark endeavoured to remedy it. Then, as he continued to seek James out, I thought there might be something of admiration motivating him.”

“Why did you think that?”

Thomas gave Mr Hawkes a long look. Mr Hawkes returned it levelly, not resiling from the question in the least.

“He made his approaches when I was absent or distant,” Thomas said shortly. “I was present when they were introduced, and I observed Mark’s discomfort then. I know very well the burden of concealing emotions that are inadvisable or inappropriate. I know that in the concealing of them, they usually increase in strength, and one’s behaviour begins to be dominated by them.” 

“But McGraw did not confide in you as to what was said between them?”

“Not of his own accord,” Thomas replied. “A great many people speak to James, as I’m sure you are aware, and rarely does he find the conversation to his liking. We do not usually spend our time together discussing the things he has discussed with others.”

“Not usually,” said Mr Hawkes. “But this time?”

“I broached the subject in jest,” said Thomas. “I had observed James and Mark in conversation as they came to dinner, and so I asked James if I had any reason to be jealous.” Mr Hawkes looked at him with piercing interest; Thomas could not help but smile. “James made no answer, and he did not need to. I have never belonged to the school of thought that a man must exclusively possess that which he loves. Even if I had, there has never been a man I have trusted more, and nor will there be. I had no real cause for concern.”

“You will tell me, I hope, what he said to you about Higgins,” Mr Hawkes said, a touch of amusement overlaying his impatience, “once you are finished imparting your philosophies.”

“I would prefer not to,” Thomas said quite seriously. “Mark spoke with James in confidence, and so too did James with me.”

“If they had not let it come to blows between them, none of this would need to be said, but they did, and so it does. This is my job, Thomas, and I must be allowed to do it. I do not take the responsibility lightly.”

“James said that he did think Mark was taken with him,” Thomas said, letting his discomfort with the lie stand in as reluctance to divulge the truth. “Mark had spoken to him of being dissatisfied with his life here, of finding no joy in it, thinking to find it common ground between them. What James said to me was that Mark seemed to think that talk of uprisings and rebellions was what would impress James, that he seemed eager to pledge his service to such an end.”

“And so it was again today?”

“I did not hear their conversation. I cannot tell you what was said in the beginning.”

“So you have said.”

“I can say it was clear that James was refusing whatever it was Mark was asking of him. He said he would not risk his life for others’ desires that he did not share. Mark invoked the name of Captain Flint and expressed disappointment in James as he is now. That is a sore point for James, as you can imagine.”

“I do not think McGraw assaults everybody who speaks to him so.”

“No,” said Thomas. “That occurred when Mark mentioned me.”

“An even sorer point.”

Thomas sighed. “I truly believe that the issue is resolved now it has come to blows between them. James had hoped that offering no response or encouragement would deter Mark, but it seems that it only served to encourage and then aggravate him. This response is definitive and surely will have broken whatever desire Mark had to pursue him. There can be no misinterpreting what has happened today.”

“That’s as may be,” said Mr Hawkes. “Such a state of affairs should have been brought to my attention well before it reached this point, as you have done previously.”

“I have not always brought my concerns to anybody’s attention,” Thomas said. “Only those that I perceived would be assisted by outside intervention. Bearing in mind James’s unique and precarious position, I did not wish to escalate Mark’s personal interest in him into anything that could be taken as something much larger. If I had thought there any danger in Mark’s ideas, it would be a different matter.”

“You think there is no danger,” Mr Hawkes said, and his tone gave little indication as to what he thought of that.

“Some of the things he said and did when he was involved with William Cunynghame were much more extreme than this,” Thomas said. “He is a man of passion, but those passions have been short-lived. So I believe it is here.”

“Would you consider that you know Mark Higgins well? Is he a friend?”

“He is not a friend,” Thomas said quite honestly. “Our paths have rarely crossed. I knew him best when he was involved with William, and largely through William’s words. I have formed my impression of him, but it is not one based on any intimacy we share. I wish him well, however, and I have sympathy for his difficulties.”

“You bear him no ill-will for what has happened today?”

“Of course not,” Thomas said in genuine surprise.

“Will Mr McGraw?”

Thomas considered that question for a moment. “Quite possibly,” he allowed. “But his temperament need not affect his behaviour. He is quite set on quelling disruption as it surrounds him and will likely be even more so after today. I do not think there is any cause for concern. In time, these things will settle.”

Mr Hawkes looked Thomas in the eye, and Thomas could tell there were things he was thinking, things he might have asked Thomas or said to him were he not constricted by his role and his persona as overseer. Thomas remembered the understanding he had shown on James’s arrival and the scrupulous way in which he conducted himself, and he found he still had no qualms about deceiving him. They stood on opposite sides, and so they must play. The game would only be won if none on the other side realised it was afoot.

“I am yet to speak with Mr McGraw, as he was occupied in the washhouse.” Mr Hawkes said. “I will do so now, and I hope not to detain him for long.” He pushed himself to his feet and looked down at Thomas. “If this happens again, action will have to be taken.”

“It will not happen again,” Thomas said. “Word will quickly spread of what has befallen Mark.”

“We do not like to use threats of violence here to prevent disruptive behaviour,” said Mr Hawkes.

“Then I expect your men will very soon be laying down their arms.”

A glimmer of a smile showed on Mr Hawkes’s face and then was gone. “Good evening, Thomas,” he said. “If any more such problems arise, I expect you to bring them to my attention. I will have your word on that.”

“You have it," said Thomas, rising to his feet, the insolence of remaining seated finally becoming too much for him. He could not appear sincere in such a promise if he did not stand and look Mr Hawkes in the eye. He offered the overseer his hand, and Mr Hawkes took it.

“I believe you and I want the same thing here,” Mr Hawkes said, letting go and stepping back.

“Very much so,” said Thomas. “It is harder for James to trust in this. It is hard for him to trust at all.”

“He trusts you,” said Mr Hawkes. “And so do I.”

Thomas felt himself blinking at that declaration, his equilibrium threatened for the first time. “Thank you,” he said, hoping that Mr Hawkes would not think anything amiss in the surprise in his voice. “I am honoured by your trust.”

Again, Thomas had the feeling there was more that Mr Hawkes wished to say to him, but all he said was, “Good evening, Thomas,” and then he was away again.

Thomas told himself that Mr Hawkes was no fool and that the things he said, even if said in earnest, would always be strategic. Even so, he did mourn the fact that just as Mr Hawkes was showing something of himself to Thomas, Thomas must be closed to Mr Hawkes. He could never again look at the overseer with the simple goodwill he once had – nor any of the guards, nor the serving staff, and certainly not Mr Oglethorpe himself. 

As James had said to Thomas when they had been considering who to bring into their confidence in this matter, one’s opponents in a struggle were not always one’s enemies, and it could be enemies that indeed proved to be the best allies. Hence George Dalton and Jack Howarth had been invited into their conspiracy, and George Crutchley and Stephen Mattner had not. Thomas had to harden his heart against guards he had known ten years in some cases, that he held genuine affection for, in the knowledge that their bullets would prove just as deadly as those fired by any other. Any man who stood in the way of liberty must be opposed and overcome with the same resolve and by the same means, regardless of what Thomas’s personal feelings about him might be.

These truths were easier to face when Thomas had James at his side. Thomas glanced at the empty stool, which no longer reminded him of his time with James that morning but of Mr Hawkes’s impassive questioning and the dangerous path they now could not turn back from.

He moved and sat on it himself, arresting a trail of thought that was best not to be ventured down alone, and patiently awaited James’s return.


	20. A Story is Untrue - Day 55

James and Thomas sat together in the shade of a small thicket of pine trees in a field empty of crops or livestock, in the patch where the grass was thickest underneath the outermost of the curving branches. The air was cool and the sky overcast. Occasionally the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and the grass grew dappled where they sat, but those moments did not last long before grey settled across them once again.

It had not rained in three days, and the grass was crisp and dry. The ground they sat on sloped gently down away from a rickety wooden fence and then levelled out, being perfectly clear up to a line of trees a few hundred yards away. The slope continued to rise on the other side of the fence, forming a sizeable hill which stood between them and a cluster of farm buildings, as well as wider expanses of land that were in active cultivation or kept cattle. Two bags sat by the nearest tree trunk alongside the two newest additions to their modest assortment of weapons: an old sword and an even older axe that James had exchanged for a somewhat finer sword he had won a few days previously in the seediest tavern Thomas had ever frequented. 

James had agreed to begin reacquainting Thomas with hand-to-hand combat before they set out on the last few miles’ walk they had ahead of them for the day, and so they did not have a lot of time to sit and rest after having eaten lunch, but Thomas could get quite used to sitting idle in meadows with the love of his life, peaceful and sated and unburdened by responsibility. This moment itself would not last for long, and so Thomas was determined to savour it. “ _Come live with me and be my love,_ ” he said, the words coming to him out of a wistful thought that was gone before he could grasp it.

James looked at him a moment in surprise and then frowned a little, his brow wrinkling. “ _And we will all the pleasures prove_ ,” he said. Then he shook his head, still frowning.

Thomas had not actively committed this poem to memory; its opening line shone brighter in his mind than anything that followed it. “Valleys, groves, hills and fields,” he said, trying to recall the shape of the verses on the page. “I think.”

James sighed. “ _Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove_.”

“ _That valleys, groves, hills and fields, woods, or steepy mountain yields_ ,” said Thomas as the words came back to him in a rush. “ _And we will sit upon the rocks, seeing the shepherds feed their flocks_.”

“Something about beds of roses,” said James, half yawning. “A cap of flowers. A girdle, or a kirtle, or a beetle.”

It had been a kirtle, Thomas remembered, embroidered with leaves of myrtle, but he was certain there was something they were missing in between. Words and phrases came to mind – _fair lined slippers for the cold_ – but he could not recall the order and the form in which they belonged.

Nor did James seem particularly dedicated to doing so. “Madrigals,” he said, scratching the side of his calf.

“ _Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, by shallow rivers to whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals_ ,” said Thomas, marvelling at the easy flow of the words now he had remembered them. “Thank you.”

James shrugged. “I never was particularly enamoured with Marlowe. I am surprised so much has stayed with me after so long.”

It was a source of eternal fascination to Thomas, the power of words to insinuate their way into a person’s life without his intent or, sometimes, his awareness. Words lived on well after he who had penned them had passed into the grave, and ones that had lain dormant for years, even decades, sometimes broke the surface and drew breath once more. Many words had been lost to Thomas during his time under lock and key; those that returned to him he considered precious beyond belief. He thought of Homer when he contemplated James – of Achilles’s rage and Odysseus’s guile – and of Virgil, and Anne Bradstreet, now, who had loved her husband dearly and missed him desperately when he had been away from her. This moment of tranquility and repose had brought to Thomas’s mind a poem over a hundred years old, not published until well after the death of its author, to which Thomas had not given serious consideration since he was barely past twenty years of age.

A man did not always get to choose the words that lived inside him.

“And what of Raleigh?” he asked James, remembering the discussions he had had on the topic when he was young. 

“His response?” James asked. “I cannot bring it to mind.”

Nor could Thomas, past the opening stanza, and he thought that was perhaps for the best. He would sooner remain in a world of caps of flowers and birdsong by rivers, at least for the moment. Perhaps he was foolish; perhaps he was trying to regain a youth that was long gone and largely wasted. Perhaps he was trying to soften James beyond the point he could reasonably be softened, to rewrite their story as a classical romance instead of the disjointed, brutal misadventure it had been up to this point. “I never thought I could be so enchanted by pastoral bliss,” he said. “As a young man I could grasp its beauty but not its personal appeal. I wonder, had I the chance now to go through my library and acquaint myself properly with the genre, how different things might be. But that opportunity is lost.”

“Mmm.”

“It appealed to you, though, even in those days.”

“No, it didn’t,” James said reflexively.

Considering the knowledge Thomas had at his disposal it was an exceptionally weak denial, and he was more amused than anything else that James had attempted it. “I have not forgotten our discussions of the Georgics,” he said, thinking of James pacing the bedchamber so very nearly unclothed, responding to Thomas’s questions with such thoughtful sincerity that Thomas had not been able to stop asking them, until James was nearly falling asleep on his feet and Thomas had to pull him into bed. “Do not think I have forgotten that.”

A smile played around James’s lips as he reflected on the memory, and Thomas answered it with a small smile of his own. Then James looked away down the hill and sighed. “It has been a long while since I have spent time with anyone who knows so much of who I have been,” he said. “It is not so easy now for me to make my own truth.”

“No indeed,” said Thomas, enjoying the disgruntled expression that passed over James’s face.

“You are the only one I have ever spoken to of this in all my life,” he said, pained, “and it is you I find myself here with today, when all others have gone. So I grant you, yes, a peaceful and comfortable life is something I have long coveted and something I thought, as a younger man, might one day be within reach. You are quite right.”

“You want it, but you do not seek it even now,” said Thomas. “You deny yourself that which you most deeply desire.”

“We have had this conversation, I think,” said James. “Many years ago.”

So they had, and much more recently than that as well. Thomas was content to let the matter pass, if that was what James wished, but he fully intended to revisit it again when the time was right. He would try one more avenue, and if James was not receptive, they could begin their training. “ _If these pleasures may thee move, come live with me and be my love_ ,” he said. “Why not?”

“I know you delight in argument for argument’s sake,” said James, half affectionate and half exasperated, “but there is little to be gained from this. A life of pastoral bliss has never appealed to you, by your own admission, and I am set against it. Why then entertain the notion?”

James’s tone was light, but his question had been in earnest, and so Thomas would answer it. “You speak as though you have no choice in the matter,” he said. “You speak as though the things that have happened to you and the things that you have done have placed you on a path that cannot be deviated from.”

“This is so,” said James plainly. “I cannot turn away.”

Thomas felt himself frown, though he had been trying not to. His argument was clear and simple in his mind. The logic of it was undeniable, and its progression was without fault. What lay underneath it, however, would not lie quiet, and so he frowned. It was not wrong to do so, nor detrimental to his argument, not when James had always been as much susceptible to emotion as he was to reason. “I wish to exercise a choice,” he said. “Choice was taken from me on the day you were sent away. You know how long ago that was. I would see it return to me fully and completely. I would see you acknowledge that you make choices, that you are accustomed to making choices and that being unwilling to do a thing is not the same as being truly incapable of it. You made choices under great duress, I am sure, but you have still chosen.”

“A choice under straitened circumstances is not freedom of choice,” said James.

“It is not no choice at all.”

“I was going to free you from Bethlem. As soon as I learned you were there, I intended it. I chose instead to leave with Miranda. I know what choice is.”

“Then you know equally you have one before you now.”

James’s expression was pained. He would be well within his right, Thomas thought, to remind Thomas of the promise he had already made that he would not stand in the way of James’s quest and that he would not ask him to give it away. Thomas did not intend to break that promise and did not think he could ever bring himself to do so, and yet he did not like to think he had no free will in it. 

“It is as you said,” said James, saying nothing of any promises made or broken. “You said you could not endure indefinitely roaming the wilds of America. I could not endure living quietly and letting the story of this rotten empire take its course without standing in its way. I could choose to do so, yes, but it would be more far destructive to me than the other. It offends me to the core.”

“You said you considered my survival an impossibility because you could not possibly withstand the revelation of it.”

James closed his eyes, pressing his lips tight together. 

“And here you have withstood it.”

James exhaled heavily through his nose and opened his eyes again. “You sit there and say honestly to me that, knowing what you know of the world, you wish to live modestly and quietly with me, to look to our own lives and let events elsewhere take their course? That is what you mean when you say you wish to return to the fullness of life? A petering out and an acceptance of things as they are?”

“I wish to choose,” said Thomas. “I wish to know the truth of it, so I can choose.”

“That is positively biblical of you,” said James. He had not lost any skill in deflecting a good point well-made by Thomas with a dry remark or a cheap point. Thomas, on seeing James’s satisfaction with his own wit, could never rebuke him for it. As long as Thomas could not help but smile, James would never stop. “You make criticism of me for not entertaining an option that is open to me and I cannot countenance taking,” James said, more serious now. “And yet for form’s sake you advocate for a life that not only is not suited to us but also cannot exist. Life out here is hard, and it is ugly. This is not England, and you are no longer a lord. There is no such bliss to be found. There is forced labour for most and bare subsistence for those who can still call themselves free.”

“You cleave to Raleigh, then.”

“I do not,” James said with no small disgust. “His nymph is not moved by the shepherd’s promises, knowing them to be hollow, and so rejects him. If they were true, she says, she might go with him. I do not need those promises, Thomas. I am already with you. I am not a fucking nymph.”

Thomas laughed, thinking how much better James remembered the poem than he had let on. “No,” he said. “You are not.”

“And yet you persist in coaxing me,” said James.

“I enjoy it,” said Thomas, smiling.

James’s lips curled upwards. “So I gather.”

“But we did not come out here to discuss poetry and philosophy all afternoon,” said Thomas as he felt the conversation come to its natural end.

The lines in James’s face deepened as he grimaced. “I thought perhaps you had forgotten.”

“You hoped I had,” said Thomas, climbing to his feet. “You are reluctant to do this.”

James shook his head, accepted a hand up and went to pick up their two weapons. “On which side of the line does this exercise lie?” he asked. “The personal or the political?”

“The personal,” Thomas said promptly, holding out a hand. “I know there will be violence sooner or later, whatever life we choose to live, and I personally would like to live to see our future. I do not expect the training in swordsmanship I have not attended to in over twenty years will be much good to me here.”

James shrugged. “It’s a start.” He handed the sword to Thomas, which was just as well, because Thomas would not know how to begin going about fighting with an axe. James then led the way down to level ground and Thomas followed him, testing the weight of the sword in his hand as he went.

It was not greatly different from weapons Thomas had wielded as a young man, though he had only ever done so in sport or training and never in anger. The blade was perhaps thirty inches in length, marred by black spots and only nominally sharp along its single edge. The hilt was in the double-shell style, gilt with brass, and it sat comfortably in Thomas’s hand once he had taken it. The sword itself felt oddly light; after his years at the plantation, Thomas was considerably stronger than he had ever been in London, despite his now-advancing age. That being said, he knew that as soon as he had to wield the sword in earnest, he would learn the difference between strength built from agricultural labour and the kind of strength required to hold one’s own in battle for even half a minute.

James stood back from him as he approached, holding the axe by the very bottom of its handle. He did not scrutinise Thomas’s grip or the positioning of his feet or contemplate the staging ground for the sparring session. His eyes were fixed on Thomas’s face, and there was a sadness in his eyes that made Thomas want to take him in his arms, not raise arms against him.

“I do not know how to do this,” James said, aggrieved. “How can I strike even a single blow against you? There is no sense in it.”

“You have instructed others, surely, in the past.”

“You are not others,” James said, as though Thomas’s statement had been a barb that had pierced him.

“Here,” said Thomas, approaching him step by careful step. James shifted his stance to stand lighter on his feet, holding the handle of his axe a little more firmly. “Allow me.” 

He wondered for a moment how many had faced James with sword in hand and it had been their end. He wondered how many had come to grief without ever having seen him coming at all. Then he put that out of his mind and concentrated on what he must do. He aimed a blow first at James’s shoulder, then at his waist and then at his head, and James parried all three with the head of his axe with frightening ease. The disquiet slowly faded from his face, replaced with stony concentration, an awareness and a readiness to react.

Thomas tried to remember those lessons he had had as a boy and his dabbling in swordplay as a young man. His form had always been commended, and his memory for the sequences of attack near-flawless. For as long as he had considered it an amusement, a game to be played with other boys and young men, Thomas had excelled. Once he fully understood what he would be expected to do with those skills if he continued to develop them, he had very quickly become a poor swordsman and a highly unreliable student, to his younger brothers’ great disappointment and his father’s disgust.

With only that training behind him – and so very far behind him it was – Thomas could never surprise James, whose training had been of the very same school. Nor did he dare to hope that James would have forgotten anything he had learned, however long ago it had been for both of them. He may have developed new skills to adapt to the circumstances in which he found himself, but he would not have let his fundamentals fall by the wayside.

But it had been Thomas’s idea to do this, and so he could not but try. This time, James caught Thomas’s sword in the curve of his axe and twisted, and the sword flew out of Thomas’s hand before he could withdraw it. He rubbed his now-empty hand, more through lack of anything else to do with it than any real pain it had caused him. 

“There is something to work with there,” James said. “I will not have to start at the very beginning.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas sardonically, retrieving his sword from where it lay in the grass.

Once Thomas was armed again and ready, James lowered his axe and stood plainly before him, a resolution seeming to have taken him. “I taught John Silver,” he said. Thomas stood facing him, sword in hand, and listened. This was a new layer to James’s reluctance Thomas had not considered, another scar that he could not see unless James decided to show it to him. “I decided I wanted him to have the best chance possible of survival, and he would need to relearn everything he knew about fighting – which was nothing, really – after the loss of his leg. I taught him as I would teach a boy, and he allowed it, despite very obviously thinking it was not worth either of our time.”

“But you insisted,” Thomas said.

“I did.” James beckoned for Thomas to make another attack.

“And he complied.”

“He did.”

That seemed as much as James was willing to say, for the time being at least, so Thomas tucked the issue away in his mind and approached James again, more thoughtfully this time, trying to think what the weakness of an axe might be as a weapon. It was much shorter than Thomas’s sword, and its cutting edge was much smaller. The particular axe James held was designed to strike wood, not flesh, and bore marks of age and use. None of these things, Thomas knew, would do much to reduce the advantage James held over him as they sparred. 

“You are taller and heavier than most you will face,” said James. “Your reach would be longer than mine even if I had a sword the equal of yours.” He stopped short of giving Thomas any real advice, offering only those two brief observations.

“You have the counter to any move I might make,” Thomas said. “Any pass I attempt is doomed to failure.”

James nodded. “Try.”

Thomas made an attempt to turn James’s axe out wide, bring his sword to the inside and lunge through; James again knocked the sword out of his hand with little more than a flick of his forearm.

“You will not say it was a good attempt?” said Thomas in hope he already knew was vain, bending to retrieve the sword once again, soured by his failure even as he had accepted its inevitability.

“You need to improve your grip,” James said without acknowledging the question or offering even a hint of praise. “I will show you.”

“I remember,” said Thomas. “I only need practice.”

“Very well,” said James, remaining where he was. “Try again.”

Thomas settled the sword in his hand and concentrated on maintaining the correct grip as he thought his way through his next approach, resolved that however James might defeat him, he would at least end the pass with sword still in hand. All Thomas had in his favour was James’s reluctance to attack him, and Thomas would need to be a much better fighter to be able to take advantage of that. He would need to leave an opening that James would normally take, seize on his indecision and then strike. He could not begin to think of a way of doing that.

“Doing nothing at all is not usually an effective tactic,” James commented. “It’s considered quite dangerous in the heat of battle.”

“I am thinking,” Thomas said.

“Also a danger,” said James. “Sometimes all one can do is act and react.”

"Yes, and trust in one’s training,” said Thomas, “which I do not have.”

“Not every fighter is trained,” said James. “Some simply do enough to survive, time and time again, resolve not to die and in this way gain mastery. These are the most fearsome to face because they have learned to fight by fighting and not by any course of training that might be known and recognised by another.”

“It is ironic,” Thomas said, “that in doing this I will learn to fight you and you alone, when you are the one person in the world I know I never need fear.”

James lowered his axe and just looked at Thomas, a small twist to his mouth and a faraway look in his eyes. Thomas was familiar with the expression by now; it was one of two James wore when his thoughts turned to John Silver and stayed there a while. This was the softer of the two but the harder for Thomas to bear. He knew he stood now in direct comparison with another man, and he knew he would not be privy to any conclusion James might draw from the juxtaposition until days later, when James felt himself able to raise the topic with equanimity. These were not interludes that sat well with Thomas, but he knew they were necessary for James’s state of mind, and so he bore them as best he could.

“I have missed you,” James said as he returned to the present moment, looking Thomas directly in the eye from yards away. “There was a part of me that could not breathe in your absence.”

“Hoy!” someone shouted from up on the hill. “Hoy!”

James turned his head; Thomas mourned the hardness that came over his face as he learned that he was observed. Thomas himself fought to flatten the emotions that James’s words had kindled in him. He looked at James’s set jaw and stern mouth and resigned himself to his public role as James’s travelling companion, partner in business and nothing more. The pretence was tiresome by now, and growing only more and more difficult each time it became necessary, but there was nothing for it but to adopt the guise and go and speak to this man, to explain their trespass and apologise for it and then head onward to Peter’s Point. Thomas walked up to the fence and leaned his sword against a post; James walked up beside him, keeping his axe in hand.

The man approaching them was long-haired and thickset, dressed in clothing stained with mud and sweat. He was perhaps thirty or a little older, and though he had grown a beard, it was coarse and spare. He had no weapon that Thomas could see, and there was nothing to be wary of in his stride. He joined them at the fence and leaned sideways against it, looking first at James, who was nearest to him, and then past him to Thomas. “This is my land,” he said, nodding at the field James and Thomas stood in. There was more than a little of the West Country in his accent, but there was something else also that Thomas could not quite place.

“It’s empty,” said James. “The fence is broken further down that way.”

“I know,” the man said. He looked at James’s axe, at Thomas’s sword and then back up at the two of them. “That isn’t the same thing as an invitation. You two duelling?”

A second man crested the hill behind him and began to descend, this one larger but moving more slowly.

“Yes,” said James, his tone unfriendly. “This is my duelling axe.”

It burned him, Thomas knew, to have to pretend in this way, but his frustration did not reveal itself in the same way Thomas’s did. Where Thomas performed his role diligently, presenting himself as benign, amicable and obliging to a fault and only allowed himself to feel the repercussions of the pretence once the encounter was over, James largely resorted to hauteur and sarcasm when accosted by strangers. As Thomas worked to mitigate James’s unfriendliness with his own good-natured behaviour in company, so James, once they were alone again, did everything that could be done to ease Thomas’s lingering distress.

The farmer squinted at the axe and looked darkly at James. “Well, forgive me for asking,” he said.

“Oh, no apology necessary,” James said, sounding as lordly as if he had really been one. “It’s an easy mistake to make.”

Thomas was about to apologise for James and introduce himself, but after a fairly good-natured grimace the man spoke again. “You’re new around here,” he said. “Where’d you come in from?”

“From the south,” said Thomas, before James could say _through the fence_ or any smart remark of the kind.

That visibly piqued the man’s interest. “The south? You see any sign of an escaped slave that way?”

Thomas glanced at James, who shrugged. “No, none.”

“Fucking hell,” the farmer said, shaking his head, his dark curls swinging onto his cheeks and away again. “They just fucking vanish, don’t they? They just up and fucking vanish.”

“No,” James said. “They don’t.”

After a moment the man realised that had not been a sarcastic answer but a genuine one, and he seemed far more offended by the genuine contradiction than he had been by what he’d at first taken for ridicule. “What do you mean, they don’t?” 

“Nobody vanishes,” James said, making his disdain for the concept plain. “You either can find them or you can’t. They don’t vanish.”

The man stopped leaning on the fence and stood up straight. “And who are you, exactly?”

“James Smith,” James said, suddenly amiable and neutral, offering his hand across the fence to be shaken.

“Thomas Barlow,” said Thomas, coming up behind James and reaching out to do the same.

“Oldfield,” the man said, somewhat placated by the handshakes and James’s sudden shift in demeanour. “My name’s Morris Oldfield. You know much about escaped slaves, do you, Mr Smith?”

James snorted. “You could say that.”

“We have made it our business to locate and return runaways,” Thomas said over James’s shoulder. This they had discussed but not settled on as a strategy, but it led naturally from James’s response and so Thomas felt confident raising it. “I take it you have a considerable problem with that in these parts?”

“They keep on bloody trying,” Mr Oldfield said, coughing and then spitting onto the ground at his feet. “My cousin had to shoot two last month. Cost him a fortune, it did, and the third one still got away. Once a few get away, you know, they all start getting ideas.”

The second man approached the fence now. He was quite extraordinarily tall, wiry and much older than Mr Oldfield – Thomas would put him at fifty, at a guess – and his gaze was much more suspicious as it passed over James and Thomas. He stood at Mr Oldfield’s side silently, dark-haired and heavy-browed, stooping in the way that very tall men so often did. Thomas was so rarely looked down on; he found it more than a little disconcerting.

“We have come from Charles Town,” he said to Mr Oldfield, as this second man displayed no intention of introducing himself, “with the intention of expanding our operation.”

“Fin, this is Thomas Barlow and James Smith,” Mr Oldfield said. “They reckon they can retrieve escaped slaves.”

“Joe’s fellow will be off with the Indians by now,” said Fin in a gentle and incongruous Irish lilt. “You’re off your fucking tree if you go into Indian lands and try and bring your slave back out. I don’t care who you are.”

“What kind of fee do you charge?” Mr Oldfield asked.

“Fifteen percent of the slave’s value,” said James. “There’s no payment if there’s no return.”

“And if he’s already dead?”

“Then we have failed in our task and there’s no charge.”

Fin raised his eyebrows. “Confident, aren’t you?”

James’s face was still as stone. “Yes.”

“How long ago was the escape?” Thomas asked Mr Oldfield.

“Two weeks tomorrow,” said Fin, not looking away from James. “After two weeks, trail’s cold. I don’t care how good you are.”

“Joe can’t keep absorbing these costs,” said Mr Oldfield, in the tone of a man who had said as much many times before.

“If you can’t keep a slave, don’t buy one,” said Fin, in much the same tone. “You wouldn’t see me messing around in that business.”

“Joe treats them badly, you know that,” said Mr Oldfield. “If you treat them right, they won’t run away from you.”

“So you say,” said Fin. “But they don’t think like us. You can’t expect a slave to know what’s good for him. They’ll keep on running as long as your cousin and everybody keeps locking them up.”

Thomas had had just about enough of this. “Do you have any personal experience in this area, Mr …?”

“Mr O’Malley,” he said. “And what do you mean by that exactly?”

“He means you’re talking absolute crap,” said James. 

“All right, all right,” said Mr Oldfield as Mr O’Malley drew himself up to stand as tall as he really was. “How about you get the fuck out of my field, to start with.”

James climbed the fence without hesitation, landing and facing Mr O’Malley without fear or favour, axe still held loosely at his side. Thomas climbed over more slowly, leaving his sword behind him. 

A thought occurred to Mr Oldfield once they were all four standing together. “If you’re slave hunters,” he said to James, “why is he so terrible with a sword?” A chill went down Thomas’s spine at the thought that they had been watched all that time, and possibly even longer.

“He is the directing mind and I am the muscle,” James said lightly. “He’s teaching me to read. It’s an exchange.”

“ _You’re_ the muscle,” Mr O’Malley said dubiously, looking between them, as Thomas fought down the rolling of the eyes that he felt in his soul at James’s words. 

“Do you doubt it?” James said, fingers tightening on the axe haft. “I’ve fought and killed more men than you have met. I’d be more than happy to demonstrate.”

Mr O’Malley looked more than a little tempted to take James up on his offer, but he said nothing, only glowering down at James in a way that would intimidate most but seemed largely to amuse James.

“Did you fight the Yamasee down in Charles Town, then?” Mr Oldfield asked. “Joe was thinking of making a business arrangement with some Indian trackers, but it’s very hard, you know.”

“Is it?” Thomas asked.

“Well, you know how it is. No matter how fairly we paid for this land, they still want us off it. They think it’s theirs. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust anybody who will make a deal, swear to it and then honour it only when it’s convenient to them. That’s what they’re like up here. Everybody knows it.”

“Did you fight the Yamasee?” Mr O’Malley asked James, whom he hadn’t looked away from in all this time.

James shrugged his shirt down over his left shoulder, revealing first the bullet wound in the back of his shoulder and then the beginning of the array of scars over his chest. He mimed the exact sword slash that had left a ragged scar across his middle, something about the specificity and sharpness of the gesture making Thomas’s stomach clench in sympathy. “You could say that,” James said, pulling his shirt up again.

Mr Oldfield hissed between his teeth in admiration. Mr O’Malley desisted in his attempt to intimidate.

“They fight like the devil, don’t they,” Mr Oldfield said, sounding more excited than afraid.

“Not really,” James said impassively. “They fight like men. Slaves, Indians, you and I, we all fight and die the same.”

“You’d know, I suppose,” he said, accepting James’s authority on the matter with startling completeness.

“Yes,” said James. “I would.”

“We get a bit cocky up here, I think,” said Mr Oldfield. “We think we’re in civilisation just because we’ve been here a few generations. We could do with more men like you, who have been right on the edge of it.”

Mr O’Malley snorted. “Who the hell would mistake this place for civilisation?”

“You’ve never been further south than the Chesapeake,” Mr Oldfield said. “It’s practically Creedy House up here, compared to Carolina.”

Mr O’Malley scoffed and shook his head.

“What do you consider to be the markers of a civilised society, Mr O’Malley?” Thomas asked him.

Mr O’Malley stared intently at Thomas for a few moments. Thomas, emboldened by James’s success in doing so, returned the stare evenly. “Where a man can own land knowing it won’t be stolen from him,” Mr O’Malley said. “Where a man can work that land and feed his family without having to compete with the rich men who buy and sell Africans for their labour. Where he knows the borders of his land are fixed and that that land isn’t going to be claimed by any Indians or Englishmen who might take a fancy to it. Where a man’s labour and the taxes he pays earn him security and protection from lords who serve their subjects, not men who sit high and mighty and are as hungry for profit as a child for his mother’s milk. That is what I call civilisation. Not this.”

“I never knew you thought so much,” Mr Oldfield said, his shock mirroring Thomas’s own at the delivery of such a speech by such a man.

“Well, you never asked me, did you,” said Mr O’Malley, frowning again. “You think you know it all already.”

“This is all great fun,” James said with heavy irony. “But if the trail is two weeks cold, I suspect there is little to be done to retrieve your escapee.”

“My cousin’s escapee,” said Mr Oldfield, still looking at Mr O’Malley with wonder. “We don’t make enough money here to have slaves.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it,” Mr O’Malley said. “The poor can’t afford to make money, and the lords on their plantations have more than they know what to do with.”

Thomas bit his tongue so hard it hurt. Next to him James was scowling, likely regretting the promise he had made to not begin their mission until the spring. Thomas had some regrets on that score as well. If he could sit down with these two for a day or even for an afternoon, the insight he could gain would be invaluable. It was fortunate that there was no prospect of finding this slave who had escaped from Mr Oldfield’s cousin Joe. If there was, their resolution to wait would truly be tested. How could they have stood by and let this man be hunted to his death or captured and returned to his misery?

“If you don’t have any slaves for us to catch, do you know where there might be other work for two ready hands passing through?” James asked.

"There’s no work anywhere,” Mr O’Malley said.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Mr Oldfield. “I don’t know where you were planning to sleep tonight, but if either of you know your way around a mallet, we’ve got some fences in need of repair. If you help us finish that within the afternoon, I’ll put you up in my barn and give you supper and breakfast for your next day.”

“Morris,” said Mr O’Malley. “You don’t know who these men are.”

“With four men we’ll have the fence done by nightfall,” Mr Oldfield said. “It’s less work for you, and I want to hear the news from Charles Town.”

“We will gladly accept your offer,” said Thomas.

Mr Oldfield smiled, and it was a smile rather larger than fit comfortably on his face. Thomas liked it, though from their brief conversation so far he did not think quite as highly of the man it belonged to. “That’ll do nicely, then,” he said. “Come on and I’ll show you where you’ll be, and then we can set to.”

James jumped the fence and handed Thomas his sword then went to retrieve their bags from where they still sat among the trees, returning quickly and jumping the fence once more. “If you choose to walk away from this and seek retreat in the country, I will eat my hat,” he said under his breath as they followed Messrs Oldfield and O’Malley up the hill. “If you could see the look in your eyes.”

“Hush,” said Thomas. “I am formulating a line of questions.”

“Remember,” said James. “We are at rest until the spring.”

Thomas gave him a look of mock affront, feeling purpose begin to pour into his body as he contemplated their future. “It is a matter of intellectual curiosity only,” he said. “I assure you.”

“Mm,” said James. “Of course.”


	21. A Story is True - Day 89

Thomas had not been inside the main house of the plantation since the day of his arrival and had long since forgotten what it looked like. He distantly remembered sitting in Mr Oglethorpe’s office, exhausted and relieved to have finally come to the end of his journey and not overly concerned with the particulars of where he had landed. Mr Oglethorpe had spoken to him kindly and was the first person to have done so for what felt like an eternity, though now Thomas could not bring to mind anything specific he had said. After so many months of rough treatment at the hands of rougher men, Thomas had found himself in the custody of a man who was a complete stranger to him and yet achingly, profoundly familiar. Through the numbness that had long since overwhelmed him there had been a glimmer of something that felt like gratitude.

Nearly twelve years later, Thomas left bloody footprints behind him as he followed James from room to room with a loaded and reloaded pistol in his hand, a sharp stinging across the left side of his face and a burning breathlessness in his chest to go with the bruising around his ribs. He paid no more mind to the house and its furnishings than he had on the last occasion he had been inside it; he scarcely noticed the cracking of gunfire to the north, nor the shouts of command, of pain and of fear. He followed after James, whose movement was sure and efficient, who had a pistol in one hand and a cane knife in the other, who still had blood trickling down the back of his neck despite the makeshift bandage tied around his head.

Yardsley lifted his long gun as soon as he saw them; James, who had led with his gun around every corner, shot him dead before he had raised it halfway. There was a muffled scream behind the door Yardsley had been positioned in front of; James glanced back at Thomas, triumph in his eyes. 

“Mr Yardsley!” a woman’s voice called from behind the door. “Mr Yardsley!”

James waved his hand urgently for Thomas’s gun, and Thomas handed it over. James strode hastily back the way they had come and gestured for Thomas to stand all the way to the side of the room. He took aim and fired a bullet into the floor. Thomas thumped the wall heavily with his arm as the ruse became clear to him; James nodded approvingly and hurried back toward him.

There was silence now behind the door. James handed Thomas’s pistol back to him and set about reloading his own almost absently, leaning his back against the door and watching the way they had come. Then he knocked lightly on the door and spoke over his shoulder in a voice that was not quite his own. “Madam,” he said. “Are you all right?” He made a gesture to Thomas that Thomas did not understand, noted his incomprehension and mimed more explicitly a search of Yardsley’s body. “Madam,” he said again. “Talk to me.”

“You are not Mr Yardsley,” came a muffled female voice, cultured and refined and shaking only a little. “What has happened?”

“One of them made it inside,” James said, pointing emphatically at Yardsley when Thomas still did not move. “Yardsley is shot.”

“Are they winning?” a different voice called out, this one rather less polished and a great deal more distressed. “Sir, are they winning?”

“They will not harm you,” James said. Thomas reluctantly knelt by Yardsley and removed his blade and his pistol from his belt without looking too closely at the bloody remains of what had been his head. After a moment’s pause he removed the belt as well and fastened it around his own waist.

“What is your name, sir?” the first woman asked.

“Smith,” said James. 

“And what are your orders, Mr Smith?”

“Your protection at all costs,” said James. “Rest assured you will be defended.” He took a couple of steps forward and knelt quickly down beside Thomas, fishing inside Yardsley’s coat. “They will not have barricaded it well,” he murmured, “not if there are only the two of them in there, two young women.” He found Yardsley’s spare shot and powder, handed it to Thomas and stood up again.

“We have money,” the second of the women called out. Then, lower and more urgently, “Tell them we have money.”

James walked quickly back to stand by the door. Thomas reloaded his gun, tucked Yardsley’s weapons into Yardsley’s belt he now wore, took the musket from his limp hand and rose again to his feet. 

“Mr Smith, I can smell smoke,” the first woman said. “If –”

“Mr Smith, can you hear me?” the other interrupted. “We have money. Our carriage is by the house, and I know how to drive it. Take us out of this place, deliver us to safety and you will be rewarded!”

James’s face twitched. “I am paid quite well enough.”

There was a muffled conversation behind the door and a scraping of furniture that stopped only a few moments after it had begun. Thomas could now smell smoke on the air, but he did not know if it was from the two barns he had seen set ablaze or if someone had indeed set a fire much nearer.

“You will not be paid at all if you fail to protect us!” the second woman insisted. “You will be held responsible! Charges will be laid!”

James gave Thomas a long look, and Thomas nodded. “I know my duty, madam,” James said. “You are safest exactly where you are. If this door is opened, I cannot guarantee you will remain so.”

“One man has already come,” said the calmer of the women.

“They will burn this house, and us in it,” said the other. “If you wish to protect us, you must see us to safety.”

James waited one long moment, and then he spoke as if a difficult decision had just been reached. “The man I have shot had a pistol,” he said. “But one of you will have to go without.” There was more muffled conversation, and then a firmer and prolonged scraping, followed by the turn of a key in the lock. As soon as the handle turned, James shouldered his way into the room. There was a startled cry and then a scream. Thomas went in after James and firmly closed the door behind them.

When he turned to look, he found James stopped dead two steps into the room, staring at the two young women standing before him just as fixedly as they stared at him. The taller of the two was clear-eyed, pale and grim-faced; the other was small and slight and stood a little further back, a candlestick held in one shaking hand and the other gripping her companion’s sleeve. Neither of these women could yet be twenty years of age. Thomas could not countenance them being left alone in this room with only one guard assigned to their protection.

“Miss Ashe,” James said, and the world went quiet and still around Thomas.

“No,” said the smaller of them, creeping out a little from behind her companion. “She has married my brother Joseph Northby, and he will kill you if you lay a hand on either his wife or his sister. There is no better shot in Savannah town than Joseph. Everybody says so.”

Where her sister’s eyes darted frantically from James’s bleeding head, to his pistol, to his knife, to Thomas behind him, and _his_ gun, and the door closed behind them both, Abigail’s eyes remained fixed on James’s face, stern and unmoving. Thomas could not remember the look of Peter’s young daughter, and even if he had, he thought he might not have recognised her now. He could not fathom that so much time had passed that little Abigail Ashe stood now before him a married woman, grown tall and full-figured, with so much of her mother in her stolid bearing and so much of her father in the resolute set of her jaw.

When Thomas moved quietly up to stand beside James, Miss Northby broke the stillness of the room by dashing to take refuge behind the only significant piece of furniture in the room that had not been pushed up against the door: a tall spindly chair in one corner that looked like it might break if it were so much as looked at too sternly. She still held the candlestick in her hand.

“You have killed Mr Yardsley,” Abigail said to James.

“Yes,” said James. “And now we are leaving this place.”

Abigail’s voice, now she had found it again, was accusing and cold, its intonation painfully reminiscent of Peter but its timbre not at all so. “Do you always take your leave of a place in this way, if you are dissatisfied with it?”

James started toward her, bloody and unthinking. Thomas caught him with one arm across his chest and pulled him back. “No,” he said simply and firmly. “Do not.”

“We must take them,” James growled.

“No,” Thomas said again. “Not like that.”

“There is no time to be –”

Thomas moved his arm from James’s chest to put his hand on his cheek and force him to look at Thomas full in the eye. For a moment all Thomas saw there was grief and fury; once he looked a little longer, then he came to see guilt. 

“Do not hurt her,” the sister cried softly from behind her chair. “Please do not hurt her.” James pulled away from Thomas’s hand to glare at her, and she ducked down to the ground with an involuntary cry.

Abigail had not quailed at James’s movement; now she tilted her head in haughty consideration of him. Thomas marvelled at her cool control in the face of everything she knew James was and could be. She seemed more composed now, indeed, than she had in the first moment she had seen him.

“You should know better than to speak of Charles Town to me,” James said, his voice possessed of an animal harshness. “You know exactly what that was.” 

“And what is this, then, Mr McGraw?” she returned. “Men are not harmed here, or mistreated. No one has been killed. Mr Oglethorpe is nothing like my father.”

“You have been a prisoner before,” James said. “You were held captive under the fort, and Eleanor Guthrie came in to rescue you and bring you to me. When you went with her, did she promise to deliver you to safety? Did you believe she would fight for you, defend you physically?”

“Yes,” said Abigail. “Against Charles Vane and his men.”

“This is Thomas Hamilton,” James said, and the words contained so much that Thomas could hardly bear to hear them, not combined with that wild and heartfelt gaze. Abigail looked at Thomas for the first time, startled and uncertain. 

“He has been a prisoner,” James said, ostensibly to Abigail but his eyes intent on Thomas. “I have come to rescue him.”

“Lady Hamilton’s husband,” said Abigail in quiet wonder, “who was killed.”

“Quite.”

Abigail’s eyes searched Thomas’s face, her brows drawn together in a slight frown. “I do not remember you,” she said, something speculative in her tone.

“Take my word for it it is him,” James said wryly, and from his tone Thomas knew he need no longer be concerned that James might act rashly.

“Oh, I believe that it is,” Abigail said. “But I do not remember.” She left off her scrutiny of Thomas and turned back to James. “You have come in here for hostages to secure your escape.”

“Yes,” said James.

“You have killed Mr Yardsley.”

“Yes.”

“You have killed others, I am sure.”

“Yes.”

Abigail nodded. “Very well. I will be your hostage, if it means the fighting will stop.”

“No!” Miss Northby said, standing up suddenly behind the chair before quickly thinking better of it and ducking down again. “Do not leave me here, Abigail!”

“We will not leave you here,” said James. “You have said yourself it is not safe.”

“I will scream,” came a trembling voice from behind the chair.

“I invite you to do so,” James told her. “It will make this all the more convincing.”

“Enough,” said Thomas. “Miss Northby, nobody in this room wants to see you hurt. If you walk with us and stay with us, you are under our protection.”

Miss Northby peered up over the back of the chair. “Your protection? You are the ones laying waste to the entire plantation!”

“They are not,” Abigail said. “These two have come in here instead.”

“With your cooperation, this can be done with no further spilling of blood,” James said to them both. “Without it, I can make no promises.”

“You make no promises even with it,” Abigail rejoined. “The best intentions in the world are not always enough.” She turned her back on James and Thomas and walked over to her sister, kneeling down beside her and speaking quietly and calmly. Thomas could see no sign of fear on her at all.

James brushed the back of a finger over Thomas’s bruised cheek. Thomas had expected pain, but James’s touch was so light that he scarcely felt it at all. “All right?” James asked, his voice low. 

Thomas nodded. James leaned in a little closer and moved his hand under Thomas’s chin, apparently not satisfied by the answer. “I am all right,” Thomas said. “We will talk when this is over.”

James frowned a moment then turned back around to their prospective hostages. “Miss Ashe,” he said. “Do you know where Mr Oglethorpe might be found?”

Abigail rose smoothly to her feet, drawing her sister up with her and holding firmly onto both her hands. “It is Mrs Northby now,” she corrected James. “And I do not.”

“Or Mr Hawkes,” Thomas suggested. “The overseer.”

“He was with Mr Yardsley when they put us in here,” Abigail said. “He spoke of securing the weapons stores.”

“There is no chance he has done that,” said James. “That is where all this began.” 

“That is all I can tell you.”

“Then we will just have to go and see,” James said. “I will take Miss Northby.”

“No!” Miss Northby cried, holding with two hands onto her sister’s one. “No!”

James walked to her in five swift steps and then waited. Abigail gently freed her hand from her sister’s grip and embraced her tightly. She whispered something into her ear, held on for one last second, then let her go and walked directly to Thomas. Thomas did not watch James take hold of Miss Northby. He stood and looked at Peter’s daughter Abigail standing dutifully in front of him and despaired at what he must do.

“I remember how fondly Lady Hamilton always spoke of her husband,” Abigail said, frowning. “I spent hours trying so desperately to think of some great philosophical revelation I could deliver that would compel you to turn away from all the illustrious gentlemen you kept company with and come and sit with me instead. I was a very young girl, and I thought you were a truly great man.”

“There is no time for this,” James said as Thomas struggled to come up with a response. He now had Miss Northby held tightly to him, his knife close to her body and his pistol free by his side. Miss Northby wept now, hot and quiet, with her eyes firmly closed.

“It is quite all right,” Abigail said to Thomas. “I understand how this will need to look if it is to be successful.”

“I too thought I was a great man,” Thomas said. “I was quite wrong.” He put his arm around Abigail and held her to his side, loosely at first and then tighter when she did not shy away from him. He tried to imagine her as one of his younger brothers, back at a time when he had had such a size advantage over them that he still had tolerated rough-housing, knowing he would come out of it the victor.

James hauled Miss Northby out of the room bodily, and Thomas followed more smoothly with Abigail. It was easy to go out precisely the way they had come; Thomas had left Ainsworth’s blood on the floor with every step he had taken. 

* * *

The way was clear through the garden, past the milkroom and pantry and all the way to the stables. Here a cart had been overturned and the fighting core of the prisoners had taken up positions between it and the stable building to its east, alert in every direction. Joe Williams and Billy Cobden stood shoulder to shoulder, their muskets trained northward. Harry Parfitt and Jacob Gussett watched to the west, and Jack Howarth and John Bolton waved first William Cunynghame and then James and Thomas and their two hostages through as they kept watch southward.

William ducked into the stables and a moment later out came George Stevenson, who took one look at who James and Thomas had brought with them and broke into a wide, relieved smile. “I should never have doubted you,” he said, taking Yardsley’s musket from Thomas. “Who are they?”

“A Mrs and Miss Northby,” said James, not looking at either. Miss Northby was nearly limp by now in his arms. Abigail stood rigid beside Thomas, and in this mass of men fighting for their freedom, he did not know if it would be wiser to loosen his grip on her or hold her closer. “Ainsworth, Cameron and Yardsley are dead. No sign of Oglethorpe.”

“There’s a skirmish northward,” George said. “I’m assuming the logging party and whoever was in the hayfield. I called everyone in from the west gate, but some have stayed. That’s Dalton, Carver, Cavendish, Urquhart. It won’t be a pretty picture.”

“Where is their main force?”

“More importantly, where’s Mark?” William asked, emerging again from the stables. “If he’s been hurt in this, I swear to God –”

“I don’t fucking know where he is,” George said sharply. “Take your personal business somewhere else or make yourself useful.”

“Well, fuck you too,” William said, and marched back into the stables.

“They’ve retreated into the north-east field for now,” George told James. “Dunstan in command. Three men watching to the east. This is all the firearms we have here, but there’s half a dozen more men in the stables who are willing to fight with whatever they have to hand. With hostages, everything starts to look a lot different.”

“It does us no good without anybody to bargain with,” Thomas said. “Mr Oglethorpe is nowhere to be seen, and Mrs Northby says that Mr Hawkes went to the weapon stores.”

George snorted. “Good fucking luck to him there,” he said. 

“Right,” said James. “Let’s get on with it, then.” He looked at Thomas and then nodded at the overset cart. “Her first. Let her up.”

Thomas let go of Abigail and she clambered up onto the cart, not smoothly but with great determination. Thomas went up after her and steadied her as she stood atop the thing, her back straight and her chin held high. 

A shout came from the north-east, as George had said. Thomas turned in that direction, holding Abigail’s arm and hating the pistol he held in his other hand. “An end to this!” he shouted in a general northward direction. “We seek an end to this right now!”

James climbed up with Miss Northby, who writhed and struggled weakly against him. Then they stood, the four of them, Thomas and James, Peter’s daughter and her sister, and quiet fell across the plantation.

“Where is Oglethorpe?” James bellowed. “Where is Hawkes? Who will speak for this place?”

Two men stepped out of the north-east cane field and into the open, about a hundred yards away. Dunstan and Wyndham, Thomas thought, though they were too far away to know for certain. Then a shout came from the west and all heads turned toward it.

“Here is Hawkes,” George Dalton called out as he strode down the road. Behind him, William Carver and Charles Urquhart came through the west gate, dragging a bloody Mr Hawkes along between them. The two guards who had been approaching from the north stopped in their tracks and watched as Mr Hawkes was very slowly brought to be presented before James and Thomas and all the gathered prisoners.

“I will speak for the plantation,” he said, shaking off the hands holding him and spitting blood onto the grass at his feet. His round face was bloody and bruised; he stood a little hunched over, favouring his ribs. His right hand was a mangled and bloody mess.

“Where is Oglethorpe?” James demanded.

“Gone,” Mr Hawkes said. “Safe.”

“Then call your men out.”

Mr Hawkes looked up at James with dark resentment.

“If you can speak for the plantation, you can call the men out,” James said. “I ask that you do so.”

Mr Hawkes raised his left hand and beckoned Dunstan and Wyndham, the gesture expansive. They came forward cautiously and five more men came out of the field behind them, their muskets all pointing skyward as they walked.

“Drop your fucking guns!” someone roared at them from the ground behind Thomas. “We will shoot you!”

“What did I fucking tell you, Joe!” George Stevenson snapped. “Keep your fucking mouth shut and do not dilute the command.”

“They’re armed!”

“If you don’t shut your mouth I will shut it for you. And _no one_ is to shoot without an order.”

When the guards had crossed about half the distance between the field and the stables, James called for them to stop.

“Tell them to down their weapons,” Thomas said to Mr Hawkes. “And then they may proceed.”

“Mr Dunstan,” James called over before Mr Hawkes could either comply with or refuse Thomas’s direction. “Inform your colleagues to the north that a ceasefire is declared. Mr Urquhart will go with you to assure my men of the same. All will come to assemble here, and we will conduct our business like civilised men.”

Dunstan looked at Mr Hawkes for his cue.

“Set your weapons down where you are, and step away from them,” the overseer told his men. “Dunstan, do as the man says. I will not see these young ladies die here today.”

Dunstan nodded and left, and Charles hurried to go with him. Wellesbury was the first of the guards remaining to set first his musket on the ground, then his pistol, then his sword in its sheath. After him came Price, and then Lewis, and then all six of them wandered a little westward, away from their weapons but coming no closer to the guns their prisoners had trained on them.

“Who else is out there?” James asked George Dalton, nodding westward.

“The cowards,” George said smugly. “And the dead.”

Men came from the north in two distinct groups: ten or so prisoners, wounded and slow-moving, led by Charles and with Mark and Ned among their number, and then half a dozen guards marching together and led by Dunstan. 

There were low cheers, exclamations and embraces as the prisoners came to join their fellows. Thomas felt the energy behind him rising and felt something of it rise also in himself, but he kept his eyes on the guards and on Mr Hawkes. Though subdued and at a disadvantage, their full cooperation would be essential in seeing this plan come fully to fruition, and there was still a great deal they could yet do to bring it to ruin. He nodded to James, and James nodded back. This was not new territory for James; it only made sense that he took the stage.

“If anyone disputes Mr Hawkes’s right to speak for this place as claimed, let him say so now!” 

The guards all looked around themselves but said nothing. James readjusted his grip on Miss Northby, who stood perfectly still with her eyes closed and did not resist him. Then, to Thomas’s great surprise, he grimaced, closed his eyes tightly for a moment and only opened them again with great effort. He gave Thomas a minute nod and made no further effort to address the assembled men.

Thomas knew what needed to be said, and he knew how to say it, though he had expected and assumed that task would fall to James. If James was not willing or able to do so, then Thomas must. He dug down deep inside himself and brought back what he remembered of command. 

“Here are our terms,” he announced. His voice did not carry as well as James’s, which had been trained to give orders in battle and at sea, but it carried well enough that all eyes turned to him and waited for what was to come next. “Any man who walks to the front gate in peace is to be allowed to pass through it. Any violence inflicted or threatened toward such a man will be visited in kind on one of Mrs Abigail Northby, Miss Elaine Northby or Mr Henry Hawkes.”

A few triumphant exclamations found voice behind Thomas; he steeled himself to ignore them. “Further,” he continued, raising his voice even louder, “any violence inflicted or threatened toward any employee of this plantation without provocation from this point forward, whether guard, servant or otherwise, will be visited in kind upon the man who offers it. Any act of violence or intimidation perpetrated from this point forward by anybody will be taken as a repudiation of these mutual terms, and the perpetrator will thus be considered an enemy to us all.”

There was some muttering behind Thomas at that, but he paid it no mind. Now he came to the heart of what he must say and the words came to him so very easily. “This plantation has drawn its profits from the labour of the men imprisoned here,” he said to Mr Hawkes and to the guards assembled nearby. “These profits have paid your wages and provided you your livelihoods. Let these men now take what is owed to them, what has been owed for many years. Let them take what they need to prosper and flourish once they step outside these walls. Let them go and speak to those not present here now and offer them the opportunity to take their own liberty, if that is what they desire. This is what they are owed, and the debt is long since past due. Any violence inflicted or threatened on a man who frees himself or another or takes from this plantation the property he is owed will be visited in kind on one of Mrs Abigail Northby, Miss Elaine Northby or Mr Henry Hawkes. If matters are conducted without incident, we will all of us live to see tomorrow. That is what I want, and I think it is what we all want.” He narrowed his address to Mr Hawkes, who was looking at him with grim distaste, and spoke to him directly. “Are these terms acceptable to you, Mr Hawkes?”

Mr Hawkes looked up at Abigail and her sister and took a long moment to think. “What do you intend for your hostages?” he asked.

Thomas knew better by now than to trust in what he felt ought to happen, and so in this he deferred to James’s knowledge of what must. “They come with us outside the walls,” he said. “If business has been conducted in accordance with these terms and we have in our possession all that we consider we require, they will be returned unharmed before nightfall. If not, there will need to be further negotiations. I sincerely hope that will not be the case.”

“Your word that they will go free if your terms are complied with.”

“You have my word that they will.”

Mr Hawkes nodded and turned around to address his men. “Do as they say,” he instructed them. “Offer no violence and no obstruction, unless violence is first offered to you. Miles, Greene, you are to liaise with whatever men are put forward by Mr Hamilton. See that these matters are carried out in an organised and uncontentious manner.”

“Get down,” James said in an undertone to Thomas. “We will need to secure these two while all this takes place.”

Thomas did so, climbing down before Abigail and offering her a hand as she joined him on the ground. He watched James as he came down with Miss Northby and fancied his step was not as sure as it had been, saw his balance waver more than once as he endeavoured to steady the young lady. They landed in a crowd of exhilarated and jubilant men enlivened and emboldened by the turn events had taken. Miss Northby shrank back even closer to James; Abigail did not show any outward sign of increasing distress, but Thomas, with his arm around her, could feel it running through her body. 

Here Thomas was less certain of himself. It was all very well to declare that no violence would be tolerated, but these men were armed and dangerous and experiencing the first taste of freedom they had known in years. If that momentum began to run away with them, Thomas did not know by what means it could be arrested.

“One hour!” James bellowed beside him, so loud it made not only Miss Northby but also Thomas and Abigail startle. “Those of you with a job to do, do it! Those of you without a job to do, see Stevenson, Dalton or Carver, and they will give you one. Do not invite conflict and do _not_ waste time. This is not over until we are fully provisioned and safely outside the walls of this plantation. Do not fuck with what we have achieved here. Now go!”

* * *

Thomas had heard from John Bolton that Peter Fox had decided to stay on the plantation. He had heard the same from Jack Howarth about Tim Larkey and Martin Lawrence, from Tracy Hawtrey about John Lawrence and Stephen Mattner, and from Jacob Gussett about George Crutchley. Joe Fothergill had been shot and killed, Louis Tramontin had said, and Wayland Wynne had been seen seeking the protection of the guards.

He sought out James where he stood at the open gate, one pistol tucked into his belt and the other held in his right hand over his left hip, watching over the deserted expanse of land at the front of the plantation and having some moderate success in feigning that he leaned on the gate by choice and not out of necessity. “David is not here,” Thomas told him. “Nobody has seen him.”

James gave Thomas a long, exhausted look and said nothing. 

“Nobody was to be left in there against their will,” Thomas said. “You know David would never choose to remain.”

“Perhaps he is dead,” said James. “More than likely he is dead.”

“Not good enough,” Thomas said. “ _More than likely_ is not good enough.”

“Then what do you propose we do? Shall I go in after him?”

“I hardly think so. You can barely stand.”

James glared grim death at Thomas, but Thomas was not moved by it. “No one will volunteer to go back in there now we have made it out,” James said plainly, “and they definitely won’t do it for Mortimer. You are the only one who takes any interest in him at all.”

“There are two here who must go back in,” Thomas said.

James glanced at Miss Northby and Abigail where they sat huddled together in the back of one of the open carts. Jack Howarth stood watch over them, attentive but unarmed. “And?”

“And there is room for negotiation.”

“You gave your word to Hawkes.”

“I gave my word to David.”

James rubbed his left hand over his beard and nodded. “Very well. Let’s alienate every man here by trading two perfectly good hostages for a vengeful, uncooperative, antagonistic child who’s only going to run off and get himself killed as soon as he is made free.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, steadying James when he pushed off the fence to stand up straight. “Let’s. And then you are going to sit yourself down somewhere and rest until it is time for us to leave.”

“Am I indeed,” James said, setting off with long strides.

“You certainly are,” Thomas said, going with him.

“Your optimism never ceases to amaze me.”

“It is not optimism,” Thomas assured him. “It is fact.”

Jack stood aside as they approached, and the two women looked up at them with twin weary expressions. 

“Something has arisen,” James said brusquely. “One of our men is not accounted for and must be retrieved: a David Mortimer.”

Miss Northby clutched at Abigail’s hand. “So retrieve him,” she said sharply. “What is it to do with us?”

“We intend to return you both before nightfall, as promised,” Thomas assured her. “In exchange, David is to be returned to us.”

“I will go in,” Abigail said, her voice dull. “I will tell them you hold Elaine and will only release her once this Mr Mortimer is released to you.” She did not recoil an inch under the stares she received from James and Thomas, from Jack and from her sister. “That is what you are proposing, is it not?”

“You will not be permitted to come back out once you have delivered that message,” James said. “You leave Miss Northby in our hands if you do this.”

“I leave her in your hands, Mr McGraw,” Abigail said sternly. “I leave her in your hands very specifically.”

Miss Northby stared at Abigail in mute astonishment.

“You’re going to give up a hostage and just hope she sends one of ours back in exchange?” Jack asked, frowning. “And then you give the other one back for free? That’s not how I understood hostages to work.”

“No one asked you what you understood,” James snapped, not bothering to look at him. “Either go in and get him yourself or shut the fuck up about it.”

Jack considered that for a moment and seemed to find it reasonable. “Aye aye, captain,” he said mildly.

James stood a moment longer in contemplation, his face creased with effort and pain.

“We need to be gone from here as soon as may be,” Thomas said. “If this is to be done, it must be done now.”

Abigail embraced her sister, kissed the side of her head and stood. Miss Northby watched her disbelievingly and began to shiver as though in the bitterest of cold. 

“It is Mr David Mortimer you want?” Abigail asked Thomas.

“Yes.”

“Miss Northby will only be returned in exchange for Mortimer,” James said. “That is all you need to say to them.”

“What if Mr Mortimer has been killed?”

“He has not.”

Abigail nodded. Then she stepped forward within arm’s reach of James and looked directly into his eyes. “I am very sorry for everything that has happened,” she said to him, her voice soft and cool. “I do not condone my father’s actions or those of his men. I will never forget that you rescued me and protected me and treated me kindly. Nor will I forget the sack of Charles Town or the manner of my father’s death. If he had not sent me here when he did, I likely would have died there with him. Monsters beget monsters, Mr McGraw, and violence begets violence. I do not know where this violence began or for how long its cycle will continue. I hope it might stop here today with the release of Mr Mortimer and the safe return of my sister to her family. I will do all I can to see that it is so. I only wish I had been able to do something of the kind on the last occasion we met.”

“I was trying,” James managed to say, the words coming from deep in his chest and his voice shaking with repressed emotion. “That is what I was trying to do when I came there in the first place.”

“I hope you will have the courage to try again,” Abigail said, unblinking.

James took her hand, held it for a moment and returned it to her. “I do not forget what you did for us in Charles Town, Abigail,” he said. “I will never forget that. I admired you for it then, and so I do now.”

“It is as I said: monsters beget monsters. I can only hope that mercy and peace similarly beget mercy and peace. I am resolved that they will.”

James only nodded, his mouth tightly closed.

Abigail turned to Thomas and spoke to him more distantly, formally. “I am sorry for what befell your wife in my father’s custody,” she said to him. “If it was any of his doing that you were sent here, I am very sorry for that too. Mr Oglethorpe never spoke of you, and so I did not know. I do not think it is right that you were kept here.”

Thomas took that as an invitation and stepped forward, holding her hand as James had done. “I am sorry for the loss of your father,” he said, as James clearly could not and would not do.

“Thank you,” Abigail said, politely and without feeling. “I hope to be reunited with my sister very soon. Sit with her, please, and tell her all will be well.”

She walked to the open gate and then through it, starting down the long, straight road to the main house. 

James watched her go, his face haunted for a good long time, then he roused himself to movement again. “We need to be ready to go as soon as the exchange is made,” he said. “If they make the decision to come after us, we will make them regret it.” He gripped Thomas’s elbow tightly, most of the wildness in his eyes buried, then let go and walked off among the men. “Where is Stevenson?” Thomas heard him shout. “Tramontin!”

Thomas went to sit on the back of the cart with Elaine Northby, not directly beside her where Abigail had sat directly but giving her as much room as he could possibly manage. At his arrival, she clung tightly to the wood she was sitting on; Thomas pretended he did not notice and sat with her quietly, listening to the rowdy preparations going on around them as at least thirty ex-prisoners, now fugitives, made ready for their departure.

“She left me here,” Miss Northby whispered after a time, turning her head a very little so she could look at Thomas out of the corner of her eye.

“In doing so, she ensures your safety,” Thomas told her. “There has been an idea among the men that you and your sister might remain with us for a number of days to ensure a safe distance can be placed between us and the plantation before we let you go. By arranging for an exchange to take place here, she ensures that you will return home today and your ordeal will be over.”

“My ordeal will not be over,” she retorted, her voice wavering but her expression fierce. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Abigail has spoken to me of the changes in her since she was kidnapped and ransomed and since Charles Town was sacked. She married my brother so she could stay here with us because she was afraid to be on her own ever again. Did you know that? She got married because she was afraid. I have never wanted to get married, so what am I to do? I do not wish to wake crying in the night next to a husband I only just _like_ because I have been traumatised by wild men with guns and swords who glory in pain and destruction. And I don’t care, either, if you were a friend of Abigail’s father. She didn’t even like her father, before or after he died, and if she wanted to be reminded of her family she would have gone back to England when everybody expected her to. She made a new life for herself here, in my family, and it has all followed her anyway. I hate you! I hate all of you! What right do you have to do this to us?”

She was not shaking any more; she did not seem afraid. Anger, Thomas knew, was sometimes all a person had to keep their heart beating. 

“I have been a prisoner in that place for more than eleven years,” he told her. “Eleven years. Do you know how Mr Oglethorpe decides who will become a prisoner here?”

“He takes you all out of debtors’ prisons,” she said dismissively and with a touch of derision. “Everyone knows that.”

“A fair number, yes. But not all.”

“I don’t care where you come from,” Miss Northby declared with even more strength in her voice. “I don’t want to hear your story. I don’t care who you are. You have ruined everything here, and nothing you say now means anything at all.”

“You have no empathy for us because you feel yourself ill-used and are not willing to look beyond it,” said Thomas. “These men feel likewise. They have been ill-used, imprisoned and forced into labour, and they will not look beyond it to sympathise with you.”

“Working off their debts,” Miss Northby muttered, looking away from him.

“We are all very fortunate that your sister was here and that she does not think in the same way.”

“I would have you hanged, if I could.”

“I understand that,” said Thomas. “I too know what it is to be helpless and afraid.”

“You?” She laughed with quiet scorn. “You are not afraid. You are not a prisoner and a hostage and a captive among armed and dangerous men.”

Thomas made no response; he simply let her hear herself. Miss Northby frowned and said nothing.

“I did not want any of this,” Thomas said to her. “I wish things could have been otherwise. But I could not stay there any longer.”

“You should have better managed your money,” Miss Northby insisted, and the sheer mule-headedness of her made Thomas smile. 

“Lower your weapon, Parfitt!” Thomas heard George shout. “Jesus Christ. They are doing exactly what we asked of them.”

Thomas and Miss Northby looked up together to see three men approaching the gate from inside the plantation; David had one arm over Adams’s shoulder and one over Patton’s, and his right leg hung down limp as he hopped along between them on his left. As Thomas sighed in relief, he heard Miss Northby do the same beside him.

“Soon you will be safe once more,” Thomas said, standing up and offering Miss Northby a hand down to the ground. She jumped down without him, landed off-balance and then recovered, throwing a mocking look at his outstretched arm. “They are not all like you,” she said pertly. “You are only here making nice with me because you are the most soft-hearted. Every other one of you I am sure is a great deal worse.”

“Not _every_ other one,” Jack said helpfully. “Most, yeah.”

Miss Northby startled when he spoke, seemingly having forgotten he was there at all.

“There are good men and bad men among them,” said Thomas, “oftentimes coexisting within the same man.”

“If a man is both good and bad, then he is bad,” she declared, setting forth boldly toward the gate. Thomas waved for Jack to stay where he was and quickly caught up to walk by her side. They reached the gate a moment before David and his guards did; they stopped, all five, and stood facing one another.

“I thought you’d left me behind,” David said weakly, lifting his head to stare blearily at Thomas. “I thought you’d actually done it and then left me behind here to rot.”

Thomas reached out an arm for him, and he hopped away from the two guards. Miss Northby dashed forward as soon as he was clear of them, flinging herself into Adams’s arms with such force that, big as he was, he staggered back a little when she hit.

“Fuck you, Thomas Hamilton,” Patton said flatly.

“Roger,” Adams said in quiet reproof, one arm around Miss Northby. “She’s a lady.”

“She’s not a fucking lady,” Patton said. “And I don’t think she’s fucking listening.”

“I am fucking listening,” Miss Northby said. She turned to peer over her shoulder at Thomas. “And I agree. Fuck you, Thomas Hamilton.”

She had every right to speak to him so. “My best wishes for your health, Miss Northby,” Thomas said. “I am sorry we had to meet in this way.”

Adams turned and walked back into the plantation with Miss Northby. Patton walked backwards beside them, his eyes on Thomas all the way.

“Let’s go,” David urged, leaning heavily on Thomas. “You know they will come after us as soon as they are able.”

“Do not go north,” Thomas said to him as they made their way back to their fellow escapees. David’s leg was limp beneath the knee, his foot dangling as they went, but he made no noise of discomfort or complaint. “Anyone who travels that way will invite the most dedicated of pursuit.”

“I know you feel obliged to say that, and I do not hold it against you,” David said. “But you know perfectly well I am going to Williamsburg.”

“You do not have to go there right away.”

“Yes, I do.”

Billy Cobden came running up to them. “I’ll take him,” he said. “Thomas, you go and see to the – see to Mr McGraw. He’s not in a good way.”

Thomas felt whatever blood was left in his face drain from it.

“He’s not dying, mate,” Billy said, bemused. “Just go and see him. I’ll look after this little shit.”

“I am going to Williamsburg,” David said as Billy came and took Thomas’s place under his arm, but Thomas hardly heard him. He pushed past carts and the closed-top carriage they had brought with them, making no response to anybody who attempted to speak to him. A couple of men pointed him in the right direction; he did not spare them so much as a nod as he went by.

James was sitting by the side of the road on the far side of their gathering, with his knees up and his bandaged head hanging between them. Mark Higgins stood guard over him. 

“He’s all right,” Mark said. “But he’s done for the day. George has taken over everything, and it’s all going just fine.” He clapped Thomas on the arm and went to rejoin the bustle, looking happier than Thomas had ever seen him before. 

“Which George?” Thomas thought to call out after him as he knelt down in front of James.

“The one we like,” Mark shouted back. “Don’t you worry.”

Thomas put a hand on James’s knee and squeezed gently. “James,” he said. “Look at me, please.”

James lifted his head very slowly. His face was drawn with pain, and his eyes drifted in and out of focus as he looked at Thomas. They fixed on Thomas’s bruised cheek a moment, and his frown deepened, but then he closed his eyes and dropped his head again, his breathing strained.

“Your head,” said Thomas. “Yes?”

James did not answer.

“Has someone looked at it?”

“Did you get him?” James said to the ground. Thomas leaned in to hear him better. “Your man. Mortimer.”

“Yes, we did,” said Thomas. “Has anyone looked at your head?”

“Crutchley didn’t come,” James said. “Everyone else with a clue is too busy to spare.”

“May I look at it?” Thomas said, reaching to where the bandage had been roughly tied.

“No.”

Thomas paused, his hand caught mid-air. “Why not?”

James said nothing.

“James,” said Thomas, lowering his hand to rest where James’s neck met his shoulder. “Why not?”

James’s head tipped further downward. “Sleep it off,” he mumbled.

Thomas did not need to be a doctor to know that was not an appropriate treatment for an open head wound that had reached the skull. He would have quite liked to have a doctor on hand, though, to tell him what was.

Mark came jogging back, and Thomas rose to meet him. 

“We’re off in ten minutes,” Mark said. “Everyone’s accounted for. We’ve made room for James to ride with the other wounded. Can we get him up?”

Thomas looked down at James and the bandage on his head, now crusty with dried blood but still damp over the wound itself. James, without looking up, raised his hand in the air and out in Thomas’s direction. Thomas gripped it firmly, and Mark went around to James’s other side. Together they lifted James slowly to his feet, his eyes tightly closed. For a moment he looked like he would be ill, but he swallowed thickly a few times and then opened his eyes. 

“You know what,” said Mark, holding onto James’s arm and looking closely at his face. “We’ll bring the cart by. You wait here.”

“I’m up now,” said James. “It’s not far.”

“Nope,” Mark said cheerfully. “You’re not walking. Decision’s been made. You’re going to be fucking well looked after from here, whether you like it or not. I’m sure Thomas will agree with me.”

“Who the fuck are you,” said James, “to –"

Mark offered him a little bow. “Your carriage will be arriving shortly.”

James squinted at him. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” said Mark. “I just know what we owe you, and I’ll see it repaid. First item is getting you somewhere comfortable _before_ you collapse in a heap, not the other way around.” He patted James lightly on the cheek and spun around to leave.

James stared after him as he went. “Thomas,” he said, holding on tightly to Thomas’s shoulder to keep himself standing. “Am I drunk? Am I fucking dreaming?”

“You are seriously injured,” Thomas said.

“That doesn’t explain –” James waved his free hand in the general direction Mark had gone “– _him_.”

“I imagine he is quite delighted to finally be a free man once again.”

James considered that for a moment, blinking slowly. “Yeah.” He smiled and looked sidelong at Thomas. “We did it,” he said. “We finally did something that they all said could never be done.” He clapped Thomas twice on the chest with an open hand in a rather comradely fashion, and though it hurt a little where he was bruised, Thomas was more struck by the novelty of it. He had been many things to James, but never before a comrade in arms. The thrill of pride it gave him made him feel very young and more than a little foolish.

“Yes,” he said. “We did.”

They had indeed achieved the impossible, but it was too early yet to know the full cost of it. Men were injured, men had died, and the twin questions of pursuit and survival, intimidating prospects already, would prove a great deal more difficult if James was not in a state to bring his mind properly to bear on them. Thomas had blood on his shoes and a low ringing in his ears; he had seen five men killed today right before his eyes. He himself had shot at Bradford when they had come through the west gate, and he had missed, and so Bradford had managed to get off his own shot before Louis Tramontin had succeeded where Thomas had failed. Bradford’s shot had missed Tracy’s ear by only a matter of inches, and Thomas’s head still spun whenever he thought of it. 

When it came to who and what they were leaving behind them and the state in which they were leaving it, Thomas could not bring himself to think about it at all. It was done and could not be undone, and there were far more urgent issues to capture his attention. Those who remained on the plantation had done so by choice and would make the best of whatever happened next. Abigail and Elaine … Abigail and Elaine Northby would be there for each other, and Thomas had to trust that Joseph Northby was the kind of man who would properly look after them both.

Josiah Willoughby drove the largest of their commandeered carts over, and Thomas helped James up into the back. On the left, David sat slumped against a bulging sack, near-unconscious and yet somehow shining with triumph. Ned was on the other side of the sack, fiddling with a thick bandage that had been wrapped around his thigh, looking bored and frustrated and unhappy with the company he found himself in. Opposite them, Judith Pritchard was leaning back on a tall pile of blankets and canvas, dazed and blood-spattered, her hair in disarray and her left eye beginning to swell. Thomas almost did not see little Anthony Pinfield sitting tucked in beside her, holding his right wrist in his left hand and blinking tears from his eyes. Judith patted the free space next to her, and James stumbled to sit down on it, landing heavily and wincing in pain when he did.

“Watch him,” Thomas said to Ned, who seemed the most alert of them all. “If he ails –”

“We’ll look after him, Thomas,” Ned said. 

Thomas watched James look vaguely around himself, drifting in and out of awareness of his surroundings.

“Thomas, we’ll look after him,” Judith said. “We could each swear a blood oath, if you’d like.”

“Judy,” Anthony said in quiet reproof.

“Well, it’s not like we don’t have enough of it in here.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said to them all. “Please do look after him.”

“We will,” Ned said impatiently. 

“Go and supervise the revolution, Thomas,” Judith said to him. “He’s perfectly safe here.” 

“This whole thing can’t be run entirely by Georges,” Ned said inanely. “It’s just not the done thing.”

Much of what James and Thomas had planned together was still to come, and with James incapacitated there was a great deal that now fell on Thomas’s shoulders. He could not, indeed, leave the whole thing to be run entirely by Georges.

“Piss off, Thomas!” said Judith. “Or is Anthony going to have to remove you by force?”

“No,” said Thomas. “I am going.” He took one last look at James, who was very gradually tilting sideways toward Judith, his eyes closed and his head heavy. Then he turned away and went to supervise the revolution.


	22. A Story is Untrue - Day 89

There had been more than a few episodes of violence on remote roads in back-country Virginia over the winter, and so James and Thomas had taken to accompanying their neighbour Angus Crossley when he made the trip to the little trading post on the west bank of the James River, whether he was transporting goods from any one or more of their neighbours or going in search of supplies on everybody’s behalf. Not only Angus but also Ciaran and Hester Simpson, Douglas Graham and the Meere brothers had assisted James and Thomas in returning the recently-abandoned log cabin they had been occupying to a habitable state, and none had hesitated to share tools, food or warmth when the occasion called for it. So the two of them rode along with Angus whenever he went, offering him two further pairs of eyes, one fighting man and one who could swing a sword in a pinch, though ideally the increased physical presence would deter any potential robbers from making an attempt in the first place.

Aside from the general principle of reciprocation, the opportunity to participate in commerce and speak with local traders was an invaluable one. James took a great deal of interest in the role his namesake river played in the military and economic position of the Virginia colony, seeking to improve his understanding of the movement of goods and of people, both free and enslaved, through the area. For his part, Thomas was piecing together the social fabric of the place, from its politics to its religious character, its local personalities and its history, its regional idiosyncrasies and the sometimes vast differences between the law of the land and its de facto practices. But it was still February, and the weather had not yet turned from winter, and so they did not discuss between themselves what they had learned of the locations, personnel and financial positions of the tobacco plantations that were the bedrock of the Virginia economy, did not speak, even in the privacy of their single-room cabin, of any plan to disrupt, weaken or destroy them. That would all come soon enough; for the time being they rested, as they had pledged that they would. 

James was beginning to talk of things that needed to be done before they left: stocking the woodpile, cleaning the chimney, conducting an inspection of both the roof and the walls for any damage and making repairs if any were necessary, collecting any items that had been lent to them and returning them whence they had come. He did not do so pointedly, not to spur Thomas into action or to in any way hasten their departure but to defend against the quiet, persistent temptation to stagnate, retire or surrender by speaking his rejection of it out loud. 

Travelling with Angus was a great help to James in that regard, serving as an inescapable reminder of the wider world and all there was to be done in it, and it was equally helpful to Thomas, though in quite a different way. Their cabin was rudimentary, to say the least, and he found it pleasant enough when the weather was fair, but when it rained – or, on one occasion, snowed – and there was nothing to do but remain largely indoors for days on end, the single room felt smaller and smaller by the hour and Thomas began to grow wary of his own state of mind, his spirits dampening in spite of anything and everything James did to relieve him of the strain. James helped him, but he could not cure him, and the best remedy Thomas knew for what ailed him was open air, a change in scenery and diversity of social intercourse.

He had had all three today, and the business they had conducted had been even more successful than anticipated. Mr Heimbach had taken a great liking to the little wooden animals Ciaran Simpson and his eldest daughter Matya had been whittling through the winter, and he had three orders from Richmond for his low chairs, with twenty percent payment put down in advance. The rope they had needed had finally arrived, and James had pronounced it of excellent quality and well worth the price Mr Heimbach was asking for. Lunch had been hot and hearty, and there was news of a trade agreement having been made with the Shawnee in the Shenandoah Valley, though the story had reached them fourth or fifth-hand at least and bore all the hallmarks of a tale having grown in the telling and become more and more definitive the more distant it grew from its source.

The sun had shone for most of the day, its increasing warmth heralding the rapid approach of spring, but clouds had come to cover the sky about forty minutes into their return trip. Without sunshine, the breeze that had been cool and refreshing grew cold, and Thomas thought once again how glad he was they had found this tiny community in a low valley a few hours away from the path of the James, a scattering of log cabins with little more than two acres of cleared land for crops and one for pasture, and had not needed to venture any further north. He liked that it was cold enough at night to huddle under blankets but not so cold that there was any real danger in it. He liked having neighbours within a mile of their cabin and no closer, being able to offer assistance and receive it when required but at the same time in possession of true privacy. 

They sat now in the back of Angus’s cart, Thomas on the left and James on the right, facing each other in a companionable silence. James’s presence, which had been but a distant memory for so many years, was now such a normal part of Thomas’s life that he did not always consciously think on it – as he was, admittedly, now – but instead took it for granted. He had learned to spend time in James’s company without worrying over him, without intense self-awareness, without feeling that there was anything lurking beneath the surface that would need eventually to be said or steeling himself against any number of things that might unexpectedly be revealed. He did not feel the desperate need to make the most of every moment they had together and could breathe freer and easier for it. They had not been like this as they travelled through Carolina, and they had certainly never been like this in the time they’d had in London. They had never had the chance. 

“If you want to talk,” said James, eyeing him thoughtfully, “I’m right here.”

Thomas truly could not think of anything he wished to say. He was not much inclined toward idle chatter and did not, despite what some might say, speak simply to hear the sound of his own voice. Any conversation he and James might have that was more than idle was better conducted in the privacy of their own four walls. However friendly and neighbourly Angus was, however much Thomas was inclined to like him, he was their neighbour only for a season, and that season was now almost passed. He was hardly to be welcomed into any kind of intimacy, even an intellectual one, when they wanted to leave as scant a trail as possible behind them everywhere they went.

James did not appear to be feeling talkative himself, which was no great surprise. He had made the offer and looked away again almost immediately, scanning the woodland for dangers as they drove. Thomas was keeping an eye out himself, alert to any movement through the tall, skeletal trees or in the low green undergrowth that grew beneath them, but he was not as skilled in it as James and could not give such a task his full attention for hours on end. Nor did Angus expect him to do so; he knew that James had been military and Thomas had not and held expectations of the two of them accordingly.

It was always best that Thomas did not observe James minutely in settings such as these, where they had to sit apart and remain guarded in both words and conduct and where there were other tasks that held stronger claims on his attention, but now that he had started it was all but impossible to stop. His ability to look away from James once he had started looking, which had never been strong to begin with, had abandoned him completely on the night they first kissed and never returned to him thereafter. In keeping watch across their entire right flank, he had to look past James time and time again, sitting right there in front of Thomas with his legs wide apart, almost lounging, one hand on his pistol and the other resting along the side of the cart, perfectly at ease and yet ready, Thomas knew, to spring to action at a moment’s notice. His hair was long enough now to flutter a little in the breeze, long enough to run fingers through and hold onto. The shorter beard he wore Thomas still had not made his mind up about, but his profile was undeniable, the lines on his face so expressive even at rest, the movement of the tendons in his neck tantalising as he turned his head this way and that. 

“Or you could just do that,” said James, grinning. He was not above posing when the mood took him and knew perfectly well how to make an impression on an audience, whether it be to intimidate, to inspire or to captivate. When that audience was Thomas and Thomas alone he became a veritable peacock, seducing him with open enjoyment and easy confidence, a man grown fully into himself as he had not been when Thomas had known him before. He wore no Navy uniform now, nor a pirate’s dark and imposing gear, but in simple travelling clothes, coarse and muddied and somewhat ill-fitting, he was as extraordinary to Thomas as he ever had been.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” Thomas said, suppressing his smile and glancing through the trees and up and down the road, whose slopes, corners and bumps were becoming familiar to him just as the time was approaching that they would leave this place for good.

“Is that so,” said James. “Interesting.”

Thomas resolved to maintain his vigilance and not be led astray by temptation of any kind. There was at least an hour’s travel still ahead of them, and there were a few twists and turns of the road that could pose difficulties even when not used by robbers to stage ambushes. James’s powers of observation were not compromised by flirtation; Thomas’s, on the other hand, most certainly were. 

So they settled into silence again, James comporting himself in a less openly enticing way and very diligently not returning the looks Thomas still could not help giving him from time to time. When the road split in two, the carthorse, Corsair, took the left branch without needing any prompting from Angus. This road sloped downward, curving around to the left in a meandering arc that would lead them, eventually, to the narrow path that had been cleared to allow horse and cart access to their own small community. Corsair was strong and steady and very much acquainted with the road, but she did not much like it, and Angus began to talk to her as they drove, offering encouragement and guidance where the slope was steeper or a bend in the road necessitated careful handling. Thomas shared her misgivings, and though James’s demeanour did not outwardly change, he had spoken to Thomas more than once of the dangers of this stretch of road, of the opportunities afforded to potential robbers by its curvature and gradient and the thickness of the trees on both sides.

“Look sharp there,” Angus called back to them. “Approaching the ridge.”

James offered Thomas the pistol, as he always did at this point. Thomas, as he always did, refused it. He was not a bad shot and felt moderately confident with gun in hand, but James was far better than he and would not hesitate to fire, as Thomas knew he himself would if violence were to break out. 

What Angus half-seriously called Devil’s Ridge was the most difficult part of the journey: a short climb where the road slanted leftward even as it turned to the right, ten yards of level ground and then an abrupt left-hand turn and short descent of a few hundred yards. Corsair approached it reluctantly, snorting and short-stepping. Thomas looked intently into the woodland, investigating each shadow and each swaying branch that his eyes encountered. He listened for bird calls, though he had not yet learned to distinguish the real from the man-made. Corsair climbed the ridge, tossed her head uncertainly and then began the descent, turning sharply to the left to follow the road. Thomas quickly scanned the on the downward slope as it appeared before him and then turned to check the way they had come, in case attackers might emerge from cover behind.

When they had first come to this part of Virginia, Thomas had been expecting to encounter multifarious dangers: wolves, bears, great cats, Indian hunting parties and potential raids by settlers turned bandit. They had had one tense encounter with a bear and more than once had been serenaded by a pack of nearby wolves, but the greatest danger to their little village – if it could be called a village with only eleven inhabitants – were their fellow Europeans, so many of them unsuited to the land and increasingly desperate to survive, who saw the precarious state of their fellow settlers and determined to profit from it. 

Today no one had been camped, apparently, at Devil’s Ridge. Angus guided Corsair down the hill and breathed a sigh of relief once the road flattened out again, heading in a straight line through the woods, wide and flat. “That’s my girl,” he said to her. “You’re a very good girl.”

“Looks like the devil’s abandoned his ridge,” said James, who considered the name ridiculous and missed no opportunity of saying so.

“He’ll have moved just down the road,” Angus called over his shoulder with a grin. “Wily bastard.”

James let out half a breath of laughter that quickly faded as he looked past Angus and at the road ahead. Angus saw the large cart coming into view around the corner a few hundred yards away at just the same time and promptly set to cursing the cart itself, its maker, the lineage of the horse pulling it, the devil, the driver and all his friends and relations. This road was only just wide enough for two carts to stand side by side, so any passing manoeuvre had to be undertaken with the greatest of care. Both great skill and great cooperation were required to complete such a manoeuvre successfully, and its undertaking was one that left all parties vulnerable to opportunists, even leaving aside the very real possibility of those approaching them having hostile intentions themselves.

“Watch behind,” James said to Thomas, standing and moving to the front of the cart to confer with Angus. 

Thomas bit back his response to the curtness of the order and did not protest being excluded from the consultation. It was very unusual for anyone to travel in that direction on this road at this time of day. It was Angus’s horse and cart, and James was an experienced military officer, and the cart was rapidly approaching. Someone had to keep watch behind them while a plan was being formulated, and the task must necessarily fall to Thomas.

The road was clear behind them, and there was no movement in the trees to either side. Angus slowed Corsair to a walk as he argued urgently with James. “We’ll hail them,” he said. “Talk to them.”

“The horse is far too small,” James said. 

“I can see that,” said Angus. “If that’s a carthorse, I’m King George himself.”

“Drive into their path,” James suggested. “See how he handles his horse.”

“No chance. If we do that and they’ve got trouble in mind, they take a shot at Corsair. If she goes down, we go down and you’re paying for my lost time and my dead horse, and I know you haven’t got any damn money.”

“Then pull up.”

James walked to Thomas, crouching down by him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Take cover,” he said. Thomas went with him to kneel behind the side wall, his heart hammering in his chest at the sight of the oncoming cart, now only about a hundred yards away. The horse was a lightly-built grey creature; the cart was tall and heavy and loaded with crates in the back. 

“Ready the guns,” James murmured to himself, rippling his fingers over the handle of the pistol he held cocked and ready down at his side.

“Ho!” Angus shouted. “Come to a halt!”

The driver glanced up at him but made no effort to stop or even slow his horse’s pace.

“Time to earn your passage, gentlemen,” Angus said, reaching for his own gun. 

“I intend to,” James said with the utmost of calm.

Angus called out to the driver again. “Come to a halt, I say! There is no room to pass at speed!”

The cart came on still, and when the distance between them had narrowed to fifty yards, well outside the useful range of the pistols they carried, James raised his arm over the wall, took aim and fired. 

“What the –” Angus said, half-turning to look behind him, but James was already tearing open a new cartridge and completely focused on reloading his gun.

The shot had achieved its desired effect. The grey horse had spooked and veered sideways, and though the driver was tugging at the reins he seemed powerless to control it. The cart tilted very slowly sideways, toward the far edge of the road.

“Fucking hell,” said Angus. “You could have warned me.”

Two men jumped out from among the crates and advanced quickly on them, guns drawn and aimed at Angus and Corsair. One of them opened his mouth to shout, but three shots went off almost all at once, from every gun but his. A bullet struck the wood James knelt behind, splintering it, and Thomas’s heart stopped beating for one single terrifying moment. He saw one of the approaching men fall and the other stagger backward, heard the terrified neighs of the grey horse as its cart tipped sideways, but James had dropped his gun immediately after he had shot it, and now he clutched his left shoulder with his right hand, and Thomas had never felt fear like this, not ever – not such consuming, paralysing, helpless fear that prevented any thought from forming in his mind other than a desperate, frantic wish that James would not die.

“Fuck,” James said, pulling a fist-sized chunk of wood out of his shoulder, throwing it down and then reaching across his body with his now-bloody right hand to pick up their sword from where it lay in the coil of the rope they had purchased. Thomas watched him, dazed, as their enemy’s cart toppled and fell, as the horse screamed and one of the men on the ground yelled in pain. He had not yet caught up to the sequence of events by the time James leapt out of the cart, leaving Thomas still crouching behind cover, the discharged pistol at his feet and the wood cracked and splintered where James had been crouched just a second before. 

He reached for the gun and set about reloading it with hands that knew more than his mind did about what needed to be done in this moment. Angus was doing the same where he sat up on the box. James had rushed to engage the man who had been shot but had not fallen, who was standing near doubled over but still managed to parry blows as he gave ground toward the overset cart. The grey horse screamed still, and Thomas did not know what he was going to do with this gun now that he had loaded it. He ought to join them on the ground; his legs locked at the mere thought of it.

“Hold her,” Angus said, jumping down into the back of the cart with Thomas. “And give me that.”

The man James had been fighting was now on the ground and scrambling backwards, but the driver had come up to stand over and defend him, favouring one leg but by no means reluctant to fight. James was holding his left arm tightly to his body as he directed blow after brutal blow at his opponent; not three feet from Thomas lay the chunk of wood James had pulled from that arm, red with blood and already forgotten.

“Thomas, give me the gun,” Angus said. “Go up and hold Corsair.”

Thomas handed Angus the loaded gun and climbed up to take the reins. If he were a suspicious sort of man, he might wonder at how placidly Corsair stood and waited amongst the gunfire, the shouting, the continuing screaming of the grey horse and the smell of blood that reached even Thomas’s human nose. Perhaps if he were at leisure, Thomas would apply his mind to such suspicions. Instead he held the reins with fingers that were beginning to tremble and watched Angus jump down to the ground with a gun in each hand and run to stand over the man who James had beaten down, pointing one gun directly at him and one toward the melee.

“I’m not wanting to waste any bullets,” he bellowed. “Drop your fucking weapon.”

The driver stumbled back from James and looked at Angus. He faltered seeing his comrade held at gunpoint and stumbled when he put too much weight on his left leg. In the blink of an eye James knocked him hard to the temple with the hilt of his sword, and he fell to the ground, and Thomas could breathe again.

The man who had fallen first still had not moved. The man Angus had on the ground moaned, and his head lolled limply backward. “It’s a fucking shame,” Angus said, poking a toe at him and nodding with satisfaction when it elicited no movement. “That horse was worth a pretty penny: fair reward if it was stolen and a decent prize if it wasn’t. You just had to startle it, didn’t you.”

James moved his sword to his left hand and took his pistol from Angus with his right, not saying a word. He walked around the fallen cart, making one quick circuit and then spending a moment watching the horse, which was lying on its side weakly, kicking its front legs and whinnying. He lined up his pistol and shot, and the horse fell silent.

“It’s a fucking shame,” Angus said again. He quickly and efficiently removed two guns, two swords and three knives from the possession of the two fallen men, somehow managed to carry them all back at once to deposit them in the back of the cart and then went back to the man who had fallen first. That man had carried a gun and a small axe, which soon joined the other weapons in the back of the cart.

“One’s dead in here,” James called out.

The sound of his voice snapped Thomas out of his stupor. The fight was over and they all still lived, but James was injured and bleeding and so much further away from Thomas than was either right or proper.

He jumped down from the cart and walked over. There was indeed a dead man in the wreckage of the overturned cart, limbs askew and blood dried all over the front of his body, and the crates that it had been transporting were scattered among the trees beside the road. Of far more concern to Thomas was the deep red colour of James’s shirt over the shoulder and down the sleeve and the loose grip with which he held his sword. Coming to stand with him, taking the sword into his own hand, Thomas felt an overwhelming wave of guilt that in this new world and its normalised violence there was so little he could do, so little he had to offer when lives were at stake. He could improve his swordsmanship, marksmanship and fisticuffs all he liked, but it would count for nothing if he could never bring himself to join battle when it presented itself.

“Furs,” James said after a moment. “There’s a mark on the crates; it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out who the owners were.”

“Or are,” said Thomas.

“Perhaps.”

“We’re not waiting around here to investigate,” said Angus, who had driven Corsair level with them and seemed now ready to continue their journey regardless of the dead and dying men and the dozen or so crates of furs they would be leaving behind them. “I’m not taking a bunch of stinking bandits on with us and wearing out poor Corsair, and I’m not taking stolen goods up onto my cart and risking being accused of anything. I’ll tell Douglas about this tonight, and if he gives a shit he can come and take a look. But we’re done here.”

James grunted his assent and walked back to the two men he had fought, who lay motionless on the road together, one bleeding from the belly and the other from the leg. “That one won’t live,” he said, nodding at the man with the belly wound. 

“Nor should he,” said Angus. “Have a look at yourself and the state of you.”

James glanced down at his arm, seemingly more annoyed with Angus for having mentioned his wound than he was at actually having been shot. His shirt was now a rich and heavy red. The smell of blood was beginning to fill all of Thomas’s senses, and the sword was sticky in his hand. “We should clear the road, at least,” said James. 

“You will not be doing it,” Thomas said, his mouth moving before his mind had considered the words. 

James looked at him in no small surprise. “Oh?”

“I will.”

The nonplussed expression remained. “All right.”

Thomas reached out and grasped James’s right upper arm, wishing to God he could say what he was thinking and act on what he felt. “Go and sit,” he said, handing the sword back. “I will be with you shortly.” James nodded, regarding Thomas thoughtfully, then turned and walked over to the cart.

It was the work of a few moments to drag the dead man out of the road and place him beside the man they had found dead in the cart. The two who were still alive were both unconscious, and Thomas moved them so they lay in the shade of the cart together, visible to anyone who passed by but as sheltered from the elements as they could be. He looked at them a moment, noting the hardness of his heart and the lack of compunction he felt in leaving them there at the mercy of whoever or whatever might happen upon them. James’s blood was still on his hand from where Thomas had gripped the hilt of his sword; he thought for a moment of wiping it clean before realising there was no point to it, that much more of James’s blood awaited him back at Angus’s cart.

James was leaning against the back of the cart, resting his left elbow on his right hand and his pistol tucked securely into his belt. Thomas helped him up into the back and followed after him, piling up all the weapons Angus had gathered and then claiming for his own the one pistol there that was still loaded.

“Shame about that horse,” Angus said, glancing over his shoulder to see if they were ready to go yet.

“Fuck that horse,” James retorted. He had resumed his position from before the conflict, his pistol on his lap again and his sword still within reach. To look at him, one might think nothing had happened at all, were it not for all the blood.

“Let’s be off,” Thomas said before Angus could make any answer. He sat on James’s left side as Angus clucked to Corsair and the cart settled into its jolting forward motion.

“I’ll take you to the Simpsons, and I’ll drop in on Douglas and let him know about this,” Angus said.

“There’s no need to go to the Simpsons,” James said through gritted teeth. “We can go straight home.”

“Hush,” Thomas said. He pulled James’s shirt up off his shoulder to reveal the wound, which, as soon as free air hit it, began to bleed more heavily both from where the bullet had entered his shoulder and the spot a little further down where the splintered wood had pierced him. James sat perfectly still, enduring the pain of Thomas’s inspection and the motion of the cart with his face set grimly, not saying a word, his eyes still scanning their surroundings for danger. Thomas looked at Angus and saw he was sitting alert and focused entirely ahead of him. He leaned in and kissed James’s cheek above his beard, let their cheeks rest against each other for a moment and then withdrew to consider what he could use to stem the bleeding.

In the end he took off his own jacket and folded it up. He positioned his body behind James’s injured shoulder, pulling him back against Thomas and pressing firmly on the twin wounds with the jacket, absorbing the rough motion of the cart and offering whatever calm and comfort he could muster. James was alert and attentive, but Thomas could feel both the pain he carried in his body and the strain of repressing it. “We are going to the Simpsons,” Thomas said quietly in his ear. “I am not performing surgery on you, and you are not performing it on yourself.”

“It is hardly surgery to remove a single bullet,” said James. “I can feel exactly where it is.”

“We are going to the Simpsons,” Thomas repeated, speaking calmly and levelly in the hope that it would soothe not only James but his own stuttering heart. “We will deliver you into Ciaran’s hands, and he will remove your bullet and tend your wound, and only then will we be returning home. Please do not make me insist.”

James pursed his mouth as though he might protest again, and Thomas prepared himself to insist, but then James sagged a little more heavily against Thomas, letting his breath out fully for the first time since the cart had started to move. “For you, then,” he said. “For you I will do this.”

“And we will be staying a little longer in the area than we had planned,” Thomas said, pressing the advantage while he had it. “We will stay until you are fully recovered.”

“This idea you have of full recovery,” James said wearily. “It is a myth.”

“We will stay until I judge you have adequately recovered,” Thomas said, not rising to the bait. 

“I fail to see why you should be the judge of it.”

“And that is why I must be.”

James sighed. “Your logic is faulty beyond belief.”

“Argue against it if you like,” Thomas said. “You will have plenty of time to devise an argument as you recover.”

“We’ll see,” James murmured. 

“So we shall,” said Thomas. “But I ask first that you very soon stop all this bleeding that you’re doing.”

“I’m so sorry,” James said, voice drenched in sarcasm. “Am I inconveniencing you?”

“Apology accepted,” Thomas replied. “Just see it does not happen again.”

James let out a little puff of laughter, quickly followed by a not entirely stifled groan. He glanced sideways at Thomas and then returned his eyes to the road, a small smile on his face. “What I would have given for some starboard cannon.”


	23. A Story is True - Day 144

Just as Thomas had not known himself in Savannah until James had arrived, he had never truly known the people he lived there with until they had walked away from it together. He had never heard Mark Higgins’s braying laughter nor any of Judith Pritchard’s many and varied impressions. He had not known that Louis Tramontin liked to wear his hair long and that he was impatient to be able to braid it once more, or that George Stevenson bore the marks of heavy whips across his back. He had not seen George Dalton smile with genuine happiness and no trace of malice, and he had never heard Anthony Pinfield raise his voice in anger. He had not known that William Cunynghame sang and sang well, nor that Tracy Hawtrey was eternally composing poetry in his head that he could be persuaded to recite on occasion, provided his audience was confined to only a handful. 

When they had held their council a week after leaving Savannah and those eight had elected to strike out west with James and Thomas instead of following the rest to the north, James had been less than pleased with the result. In the days leading up to the vote, he had allowed that having two or three more in their party would be to their advantage, but only if they were the right two or three. He had warned Thomas of the danger of assuming that bonds that had been formed between prisoners could still be trusted once freedom had been achieved; captivity and freedom were such fundamentally opposite conditions, he had said, that the same person could be almost unrecognisable upon moving from one to the other.

William had declared his intent first, quickly followed by Mark and then George Stevenson. Thomas had thought for a moment that that was the end of it, and James had looked as satisfied with the arrangement as Thomas had felt. Then Louis had sidled across, and Judith and Anthony had followed him hand in hand. When George Dalton had marched over, not deigning to look at any of those he came to join, James had looked positively murderous. By the time Tracy had overcome his doubts and taken his first few steps in their direction, James’s anger had been overtaken by weary forbearance, and though the forbearance had not lasted overly long, the weariness had remained, if not increased, through the days and weeks the ten of them had been travelling westward.

And now they were eleven, because four days ago Louis and Mark had come back from a patrol dragging an Indian captive between them, with his hands tied behind his back and spitting curses at the lot of them in a language they did not know. The motion to have him killed had been resoundingly defeated, and the choice had then become one between keeping him captive and letting him go. In the beginning, five votes had been cast each way. In the debates that had followed that vote, William had declared that Thomas could speak for him and then gone and sat with the subject of those debates, firm and unmovable. At first, he had sat silently and glared at anyone who dared to look over, but it was not long before their captive had engaged him in conversation and William had found himself, in fact, captivated.

Lako was young, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, and when the second vote came back seven votes to three and Mark had duly untied him, he took the opportunity to speak his mind to all of them in English that was loud, precise and very nearly fluent. Then he had shaken Mark’s hand, clapped William on the shoulder and demanded to know why, if they had escaped England and were trying to evade capture, they were not making any proper effort to cover their trail behind them. Mark had insisted that they were, and Lako had laughed uproariously and promised to show him, over the next few days, the proper way to go about such things. He was laughing again now at the tale William was telling, and though Thomas had heard it before, his laughter was so artless and unrestrained that it made Thomas smile; he looked around at his companions and found was not alone in it. 

“I didn’t know!” William insisted in the face of that laughter, his slight embarrassment more than matched by his pleasure at the reception his story had received. “I thought you just had to pull the trigger, and nobody told me otherwise! We’re not all soldiers, you know.”

“I did tell you,” Louis said from the other side of the fire where he sat with Mark and George Stevenson, grinning and shaking his head. “When I handed you that gun, I very specifically told you it was at half-cock.”

“Well,” William said helplessly, “that’s not what I thought you were talking about.”

Lako was almost crying with laughter now; the only ones not infected by it were James, Tracy and George Dalton, none of whom smiled easily in company. George waited until Lako’s laughter had eased and then addressed him, his gaze direct and his tone imperious. He more than any of them had resisted Lako’s presence among them; he had been one of the two to cast his vote for a cold-blooded killing. Lako held no grudge against most of the company for having taken him prisoner, but he was well aware that some were to be trusted more than others. “Tell us one of yours, lad,” George said now, and Thomas felt the atmosphere shift and cool around him. “You’re old enough to have a few, I think.”

“I do have stories of battles,” Lako declared, rising eagerly to the challenge in George’s tone. “Three years ago, I marched south from Pocotaligo to drive your people from our land. I can tell you any number of stories where Englishmen die.”

“You’re not alone there,” said Louis, who in the space of four days had taken to competing with Lako as fervently as if the two of them were boyhood rivals. He glanced at James with pride in his eyes and turned back to Lako with his chin held high.

Lako looked at him curiously. “No?”

“I swear you have become five times stupider since the day we left Savannah,” William snapped.

“I’m stupid?” said Louis, wounded. “You’re the one who told a nobody stray Indian all about Savannah not two hours after you first laid eyes on him.”

“Did I tell him your whole personal story, Louis?”

“Have I told him anyone’s whole personal story now, Will?”

Thomas watched Lako, who had looked around the circle and taken note of where most people’s attention had turned. Now he looked at James, frowning curiously. “You have fought against the English?”

“He’s very close-mouthed about it,” Judith said when James made no answer. “I wouldn’t ask.”

“You are English, I thought,” Lako said, still speaking directly to James.

“In a manner of speaking,” James said. His tone did not invite further comment.

“I have always been taught that a man who does not wish to speak should not be made to,” Lako said. “But I remember this man James holding a gun on me – not half-cocked, either – and telling me I must convince him to let me live.”

“We’d already had to fight off one lot of Indians by then,” Mark said.

“James is very sensitive when it comes to people trying to kill us,” William added somewhat apologetically.

“Yes,” said Lako, his eyes flashing. “So am I.”

“I was not trying to kill you,” James said disdainfully. “It would have been simple enough to pull the trigger if I had wished to.”

“I can tell you a story where James killed Englishmen,” Tracy said helpfully. “I was with him in the field when the signal was given that our uprising was to begin.”

“Feel free,” James said, leaning sideways against Thomas and closing his eyes. Thomas put an arm around his shoulders and arranged him so his head could rest comfortably.

Tracy looked in some surprise at James, then at Thomas instead when he saw that James’s eyes were closed. “Ah,” he said. “Really?”

“I would be very interested to hear how you remember it,” James said without moving.

“Ah,” Tracy said again. “I rather thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“You were there. It’s your story as much as it is mine.”

“Go on, Tracy,” said George Dalton. “This I have always wanted to hear.”

“Hm,” said Tracy. “I suppose now I am obliged to.”

“Give it to us in verse,” Judith needled him. “Put Milton to shame.”

Tracy thought for a long moment. “The sun was high, the day was warm, the –”

“It was quite cold, I thought,” Louis said. “Wasn’t it February?”

“Well,” Tracy huffed. “There’s no pleasing some.”

“If the poet says it was warm, then it was warm,” Thomas said firmly.

“Warm is really just a state of mind,” Judith said. “Send a fresh Londoner here and you’ll hear that this night is sweltering. I rather wish I had brought a blanket.”

“I’ll hit him if he interrupts again,” George Stevenson said to Tracy. “I promise.”

“No,” said Tracy, shaking his head. “I don’t think –”

“Go on,” William wheedled. “ _The sun was high, the day was warm_. It’s a good start.”

“I think it was, in fact, rather cool,” Tracy said more despondently. “Louis is quite right.”

“I’ll tell it myself,” James said impatiently, raising his head from Thomas’s shoulder. Thomas let his arm fall down to James’s waist.

All eyes were fixed on James now, and the fire crackled loudly in the silence that had fallen.

“Four shots went off in the west of the plantation, in the pattern we had agreed to use if the uprising were to begin,” James said briskly. “I and others were working in the north-east field at the time, supervised by Cameron, Greene and Adams. We were instructed to gather together and remained under the guard of Cameron and Greene while Adams went to find out what was happening. I informed those around me that the shots were a signal that an armed rebellion was underway and suggested we might overpower Cameron and Greene and go to join it. No one was willing to assist me, so I did so myself. Once the guards were down and there were sufficient weapons to go around, the attitude of the men with me changed quite considerably. We then assisted some other prisoners in doing the same, invited them to join us and proceeded to fight our way through the east gate where others joined us from the west. Thomas and I went down to the main house in an attempt to locate and secure hostages with which to negotiate our escape. We did so, and thus we were able to set ourselves free.”

The fire crackled now in an entirely different kind of silence.

“You have butchered it,” Judith said in dismay. “You have bloody well butchered it.”

“I am not gifted, like some, in the telling of stories,” James said, returning his head to Thomas’s shoulder. “I have related to you the events as they occurred.”

“Thomas is laughing because he knows you are lying.” 

“I am not laughing,” Thomas said.

“If you smile like that, it counts as laughing,” William said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Do they?”

“Yes,” half a dozen voices said at once.

“I have a new idea,” Lako said, still watching James. “No more war stories.”

“We haven’t managed even one war story,” George Dalton said, disgruntled. “Cunynghame doesn’t know how to shoot a gun, and McGraw doesn’t know how to tell a story. You claim to have them and do not share them.”

“It is clear that now is not a time for war stories,” Lako proclaimed. He looked away from James and around the circle, landing on Anthony and Judith, who sat with fingers intertwined between them. “Perhaps a different kind of story is better suited to tonight. A story sweeter in the telling.”

“Sometimes there is no story,” Anthony said quietly, giving Judith a long sideways look. “Sometimes a thing just is.” She smiled and rested the side of her head against his for a moment before sitting up straight again.

Lako nodded. “That is true enough.” Then he turned to James and Thomas. 

“There is no story here,” Thomas said.

“Now _James_ is laughing,” said William. 

Thomas tilted his head so he could look down at James’s face. “He is barely smiling.”

“It counts,” Mark and William said together.

“Someone here must have a love story to tell,” Lako said. “Or do the English not believe in love?”

“Oh, we believe in it,” William said. “We’re just cowards when it comes to talking about it.”

“Speak for yourself, Will,” said Mark. “Watch who you’re calling a coward.”

“My dear friend and comrade,” William said. “I really don’t think you want to get into this right now.”

“Oh, and I’m the coward?”

“I have a love story,” said Louis Tramontin abruptly. “I loved a girl, and she loved me, and her brother tried to kill me so she stabbed him right in the heart.”

Silence fell over the campsite once again, this one sudden and stunned.

“You follow the same storytelling principles as McGraw, I see,” George Dalton said. 

“I’ve improved on them,” said Louis. “His went on so long I half fell asleep.”

“What happened to the girl?” George Stevenson asked when nobody else said anything. 

“We got married,” Louis said. “I took her to Scotland and her family never found us. We lived together for nine years before she took ill and died. I wrote to them to inform them of her passing, assuming they’d come and finally take some kind of revenge on me for the whole thing, but I never heard back from them at all. I can only assume my letter lost its way.”

“You say _I have a love story_ and you say nothing of the nine years you spent in love?” William said. “What do you think a love story is?”

“What’s to be said about it? We were happy. Nine years passed. Then she died.”

“So her family didn’t have you sent here, then,” William said. 

“Fuck no,” said Louis. “That was the gambling.”

“Huh,” said William. “All right. Let me see if I have this straight. Me, money. You, money. George the first, murder. George the second, also murder. Anthony, religion. Tracy, religion. Mark, impolitic fucking. Thomas, impolitic politics. Judith…”

“Moral degeneracy of the highest order,” she said when William faltered. “And impolitic fucking.”

“I wouldn’t say it was murder,” said George Stevenson. “It was a justified removal of an incompetent command. Otherwise he would have seen us all killed.”

“I’m not sure my own downfall can be characterised as simplistically as that,” said Anthony. “My crime was in possessing a healthy and rational scepticism and applying it without fear or favour. It was not only a spiritual –”

“You convinced your nephew to flee to Italy and become a Jew,” Judith said to him.

“By accident,” he protested. “I never meant to.”

“I’d been impoliticly fucking for years,” Mark said. “They didn’t send me here for that. If anything, I’d say my mistake was closest to treason.”

“Oh, right,” said William. “Because he was French.”

“If it had just been murder,” George Stevenson said, “they’d have executed me then and there.”

“But you did,” Judith said to Anthony. “It wasn’t your maddeningly contrarian philosophy –”

“Maddeningly?”

“– that got you sent here. It was the fact you somehow managed to convert your own nephew to a religion you’ve never even given the time of day. Imagine what you could do if you put your mind to it.”

“Yours is fucking just as much as it is money, William,” said Louis. “Don’t be prudish now.”

“As was Thomas’s, I might add,” said George Dalton. 

“Well, if we’re going to get into it all,” said William, “George the first was murders, not murder. Four, wasn’t it, George?”

“You have left one out,” Lako said to William, his voice carrying over the top of them all. “You did not say the reason that James was put into your prison.”

“He came and imprisoned himself voluntarily,” George Dalton said, his voice dripping with scorn, “because he’s so in love with Thomas.”

“And then he broke us the fuck out,” William said proudly.

Lako shook his head. “And yet they say there is no love story there.”

“I want to hear more about Mark fucking the Frenchman,” Judith said. “Is it treason because he was an enemy combatant?”

“An officer,” said Mark.

That distracted even Lako from his contemplation of James and Thomas.

“A French officer?” Louis said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“How the fuck did you manage that?” Judith said. 

Mark shrugged. “We were defeated at Brihuega. We were captured –”

“Wait,” she said. “Wait a second. Did you fuck the fucking Duke?”

“Did I fuck the – no, Judy, I did not fuck the Duke,” said Mark. “How can you possibly –”

“What Duke?” asked William.

“The Duke of Vendôme was one of the finest military commanders France has ever seen,” George Dalton said. “Anywhere they sent him, he found a way to win. He had the victory at Brihuega.”

“Not at Oudenarde, though,” George Stevenson said. “We were the ones who fucked him there.”

“If Vendôme had the sole command, that battle would have turned out very differently, I assure you.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s in love, Dalton,” William said. “Maybe you should have taken up a military career instead of becoming a murderer.”

“Do you really think there’s a difference?”

Thomas looked to see how weary James had become of this conversation and saw that not only was he weary of it, he had fallen asleep while surrounded by it, his face slack and his breathing perfectly steady. It unnerved Thomas and upset him still that such a thing could happen, though this was far from the first time it had. It was a rare thing now to see James without the shadow of fatigue in his eyes, and rarer still to see him light-hearted. He slept easily and heavily; his headaches had lingered long after his wound had closed. The calm, measured patience he had exhibited in his time on the plantation was all but evaporated. When he was unhappy he could not spare the energy to pretend otherwise, so he either grew surly and snappish or he withdrew into his own mind and rested there, where nobody but Thomas knew how to find him and draw him back out.

Thomas could sympathise with him to some degree. For all that he was fond of most of those they travelled with, he sometimes found their collective society more than he could comfortably bear. The further they travelled together, going nowhere, the more Thomas fancied there was something brittle in their increasingly high spirits, some growing desperation in the cheerful noise they all made. Sometimes he thought longingly of the little cabin he had shared with James from November to February, and with David Mortimer for weeks before that and with Josiah Willoughby for years before that. Sometimes he found himself yearning for a time when his life had been simple, organised and, chief of all, quiet. Lako’s startling decision to claim his place in their company and take them to Kasihta with him had helped to shape Thomas’s thoughts toward the future rather than the past, but it had also made plain the divisions which had always existed among them and could only grow as time went on. William adored Lako; Mark, Louis, Judith and George Stevenson liked him and were like him; James, Anthony and Tracy tolerated him; George Dalton distrusted and disliked him with a quiet persistence that did not bode at all well for what might lie ahead. 

For now, though, all appeared to be well. The conversation around the fire had split into three parts: George, George and Mark were in heated argument about the military career of the late Duke of Vendôme, Tracy was telling Lako his version of the story of the uprising in the north-east field at Savannah, and Anthony and Judith were explaining to William and Louis exactly what it was Anthony had said to his nephew that had led him down his extraordinary path. No one’s attention was on James or Thomas, and Thomas knew that at least part of that was by design. Out of all those they travelled with, Judith was the most keenly attuned to James’s woes and quite remarkably protective of him; Tracy did his best to ensure James came into as little conflict as possible, though Thomas rather suspected he was motivated more by his own interests than James’s.

Whatever the reasons for it might be, Tracy had captured Lako’s attention and Judith was entertaining Louis and William, so Thomas could decide his course of action without the weight of others’ eyes upon him. He attempted to rouse James with a gentle push to the shoulder and then followed it with a less gentle one when the first had no success. James woke slowly, as though woken in the deep of night and not from a slumber of only a few minutes’ duration. Once he was properly awake, Thomas stood and drew James up with him, and though a few heads turned their way, nobody made any comment when they left.

James walked quietly with Thomas away from the fire and across to the other side of their camp, where he leaned against one of the carts at its boundary and rubbed his temple, his brows drawn together and his face tight. 

“If Lako is right that we would be welcomed among his people in Kasihta, I think we should stay there a while,” Thomas said, standing beside him and relishing the relative quiet that surrounded them. “I do not think it would be wise to to come too close to Spanish or French territory without first very seriously considering the potential ramifications of doing so.”

“And what of the ramifications of remaining in Kasihta?” James replied. 

“Those being?”

James sighed and slumped further against the cart.

“James,” Thomas said firmly. “Those being?”

“It is an increase, not a decrease, in the company we would be obliged to keep. We would be required to prove ourselves, to earn trust, to prove that we have something to offer as part of our participation in their society.”

“We will have to do that wherever we go.”

“I am tired of doing it,” James said. “If we are to settle somewhere, I would wish it to be somewhere that people do not know either of my names, let alone both. I do not want to play this game where I am McGraw and I am Flint and I must constantly strike a balance between the two. I do not want an audience for my life. I am tired of performing.”

“You wish to part permanently, then, from everyone who has come from Savannah.”

“Eventually,” James said. “Yes.”

“Which of them do you think will wish to stay in Kasihta?”

“Let’s see,” James said, glancing over in the direction of the fire. “If Lako and William carry on as they have been, William will stay with him if you give it your blessing. Higgins is always champing at the bit to fight, and I don’t think he much cares who he would be fighting. He would be an asset to the Creek. So would Stevenson, and if Higgins stays, so would he. Tramontin will follow the two of them. Pinfield will stay if the invitation is extended to him; he is not a man for living on the road. Judith, I believe, will go with him. She more than any of them will not want to end up on her own. Dalton will never stoop to living with Indians and has, I think, every intention of making a place for himself in Louisiana. Tracy will go where you go.”

Everything James had said up to that point had confirmed Thomas’s own opinions, but now, at the end of it, he was thrown. “Where I go?”

“I suppose you haven’t noticed,” James said wryly. “But yes.”

“What exactly have I not noticed?”

“He does not belong with the rest of them,” James said. “You, Tracy and Anthony are the most genteel of us all, and where Anthony is younger and more inclined to be open to new ways of living, Tracy is well past the point of change. He will go where you go, unless he is encouraged to do otherwise.”

“Do you intend to so encourage him?”

“Eventually,” James said, “yes.”

“I would trust him to keep your secret,” Thomas said. “I trust both his intentions and his judgement.”

“I do not consider him a danger to me,” James conceded. “But for as long as my story is known by those around me, I can never be free of it in my own mind.”

“I will always know it,” Thomas said. 

“You are something quite different.”

“If so many decide to live among the Creek, we will be stretched thin when we continue on our way,” Thomas pointed out. “If only Tracy, George, you and I are to go on from here, as you predict, then you will be the only true fighting man among us.”

James narrowed his eyes as he turned his head a little in Thomas’s direction. “And you think I am not fit to be that man.”

“I do not want you to have to be.”

“You think I am not in a state to be,” James insisted.

“Are you?”

“I can be what I must.”

Thomas moved to stand directly in front of James, taking hold of both his hands and catching his eye. James looked thoroughly worn down but gave Thomas his undivided attention. “We left Savannah in order to lead a better life,” Thomas reminded him. “Not a harder one.”

“Perhaps none of us will be welcome to stay, in any event,” James said, though he did not put much effort into making his tone properly ironic. “Lako is young and will have no real authority in the matter. There is no knowing what might confront us there.”

“I have an ulterior motive in wishing to spend some time away from the road,” Thomas said, taking a half-step closer and touching his brow to James’s. “I want you to rest. I want someone with more medical expertise than George Stevenson, much as I respect him, to assess your condition. I want us to have some time so that you and I can rest and we can think about what it is we really want.”

James rested a hand on the small of Thomas’s back as he leaned into him. “If I believed our time there would truly be restful –”

“Um,” said William from somewhere behind Thomas. “Excuse me.”

“See what I mean,” said James.

“I know there’s not enough tents to go around,” William said in some trepidation. “But I was wondering, since you and –”

“You and Lako can have the fuck tent tonight,” James said curtly.

“The what?” William said, startled.

“What?” Thomas said to James, just as much so.

“We have had it several nights in a row,” James said to Thomas. 

“We have not been – I was not aware that was how you thought of it.”

“It’s the only two-person tent,” James said as though the matter was quite obvious. “No one’s going to be fucking in either of the others.”

“We have spent a great many nights there without doing so.”

“But we could have,” said James, “if we had wished.”

“All the same, I hardly think –”

“So we can have it?” William asked, hovering. “I haven’t asked him yet, and he might say no, but I don’t want to offer him anything I can’t –”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “You can have it.”

“Thank you,” William said, sounding desperately relieved. “I just hope –”

“Good luck,” James said, which very plainly meant _Fuck off._

“The fuck tent,” he heard William say as he walked away. “I like that.”

“I suspect you have just started something,” Thomas said.

“I absolutely did not start it,” James said. “The fuck tent is a longstanding tradition for which I take no responsibility whatsoever.”

“I will certainly not be calling it that.”

James gave Thomas half a grin. “The private tent, then, if you prefer. It’s quite remarkable, really, that we are granted it so often without opposition or complaint.”

“It is not remarkable.”

“No?”

“You may not like them,” Thomas said to him, “but you are a hero to them all the same.”

“I did not do any of it for their benefit.”

Thomas put one hand up behind James’s head, brushing his fingers lightly over the patch of shorter hair where they had had to cut it away in order to properly treat the wound underneath it. “They know you suffer from this,” he said. 

James shook his head. “I did not do any of it for their benefit.”

“There is still a debt that they feel is owed.”

“I am tired of it,” James said curtly. “They owe me nothing.”

“James,” Thomas said. “You do not need to still be fighting. Right now, in this moment, there is nothing that needs to be resisted. Let yourself rest.”

James looked past Thomas for a moment, his eyes weary and unfocused. “I do not mean to be this way,” he said. “I –”

“No criticism is made of you,” Thomas said, kissing him quickly and lightly and then withdrawing. “No one takes it amiss.”

“I take it amiss,” James said, his eyes now fixed on Thomas’s mouth. “I want to be –”

Thomas took James’s hand and pulled so he stood upright. He took him by both shoulders and spoke as simply and calmly as he could. “I want you to come with me now, and we will settle in for the night,” he said. James opened his mouth, but Thomas cut in before him. “I know you think it is too early for that, but that is how things will be. You expect far too much of yourself because you have always had to do too much. I understand it, and I do not criticise you for it, but I am telling you it is no longer necessary to be so. All I want from you is to have you. That is all.”

“I want to give you more than that,” James said quietly. “I want to give you far more than that.”

“More than yourself?”

“More than this.”

This time when Thomas kissed him, he did so slowly and at length. James returned the kiss in kind, his arms coming up to hold Thomas as he did.

“I am perfectly content,” Thomas said some time later, once there was space between them again. “This is what I want.” James took his arms from Thomas’s waist and wrapped them around his shoulders, embracing him as tightly as he had on the day they were reunited. Thomas held him close, and time fell away from him. 

Only by the loosening of James’s grip did Thomas realise that he was falling asleep where he stood. Thomas wished he had a bed he could take James to; he wished they could at least once spend a night with a real roof over their heads. He regretted very much having relinquished their claim to the private tent. 

James came awake again when Thomas shook him gently. He went along with Thomas to the smaller of the two large tents, and he tucked himself in close to Thomas when they lay down, his back pressed into Thomas’s chest. “The rest of them will wake us when they come in,” he grumbled.

“You should not have ceded the fuck tent,” Thomas whispered into his ear.

In James’s state of exhaustion, what would normally have been a snort came out as a light puff of breath. Thomas smiled and pressed his lips against James’s neck, just under his ear. James mumbled something that Thomas did not understand, and then he was asleep again. Thomas held him close and hoped to God that it was doing him good.


	24. A Story is Untrue - Day 144

For the previous three nights, business at the Swern Inn had been lively but not hectic, its four serving girls not too busy to stop and chat a moment with the clientele, smiles coming easily to their faces and coins slipping into their pockets. James and Thomas had laid claim each night to the same small round table in the corner farthest from the fire, where the light was dim and they could sit and observe the room in peace. Bessie, who looked the youngest of the serving girls, with wavy black hair and warm brown eyes that had surely not yet seen two decades of life, had taken them under her wing, hinting at which meals were coming fastest out of the kitchen and coming by to refill their drinks every half-hour. Thomas thought she might appreciate their lack of drunkenness, aggression or lechery; James said it was because she knew they were paying a fine sum for use of one of the two upstairs rooms.

Whatever motivated Bessie’s warmth toward the two of them, she had barely had a chance to exhibit it tonight. A party of twelve or thirteen travellers had arrived in town that afternoon and begun drinking before five in the afternoon. The dining room, usually comfortably spacious, was packed full, one of the two long tables entirely taken by the one party and the other crowded with small groups of men who usually were not obliged to sit so close together. The few small round tables set out around the walls were not often used at all; tonight space was so scarce that James and Thomas had to sit directly opposite each other and spread their bowls and mugs out across the surface of their table to dissuade any third person from finding a chair and squeezing in to join them.

As soon as their somewhat overcooked meat and limp vegetables had been served and eaten, James had suggested they might call it a night and step outside for a time. Thomas had seen the concern in his eyes and had known its origin, but he found himself largely unbothered by the ruckus that surrounded them and suggested they might stay a while. The more time he spent among the masses, their noise and their smell and their intensity of feeling, the easier he found it to do so. These men had come in the highest of spirits, and their drunken cheer and raucous camaraderie was satisfying to Thomas somewhere deep in his soul. On top of that, he was learning a great many new drinking songs, some of them really quite well-composed, if not very coherently performed.

Thomas was nearly as amused by James’s distaste as he was by the actual scene that was playing out before them. James made little effort to disguise his displeasure, preferring to ensure that Thomas knew he was tolerating the evening for Thomas’s sake alone and demanding that his sacrifice was noted. He looked from table to table and from face to face, making countless silent observations, none of them flattering, and keeping them all very pointedly to himself. Thomas preferred to absorb the scene more generally, feeling the energy in the room sway and shift, watching the movement of the servers and the customers as though it were a complex and well-practised dance made increasingly difficult by the rising level of intoxication in the room as the evening wore on.

When a portly, balding man from the travelling group clambered up onto his table a little after eight o’clock, James let out an audible groan and reached for his half-empty mug of beer. 

“Time for some _culture_ in here!” one of his fellow travellers shouted, and the table erupted in cheers.

“I have had quite enough of this for a lifetime,” James half-shouted across to Thomas. “At least pirates can carry a tune.”

“I want to hear him,” Thomas returned. 

“If this ends up in a brawl, I’m saying I told you so,” James said as the cheers faded out into a low expectant murmur.

“Who the fuck is he?” someone shouted out from near the fire, on the other side of the room to Thomas.

“Who the fuck are _you_?” retorted one of the party of travellers.

“My name is Peter Billings,” said the man atop the table, in a working Londoner’s accent and a voice pitched to carry to every corner of the room. “Thank you very much for your kind attention. There is a piece I have been working on over the last … twenty minutes. Perhaps half an hour. Hard to say.”

“Step down and fuck off!” someone shouted from the other long table, but he was quickly shouted down. 

A rhythmic stomping of boots and mugs arose from those around the table upon which Mr Billings stood. He raised his hands up by his head and then slowly lowered them, the beat dying out as he did. “Thank you. Thank you.” He pointed to one of the men sitting at his table and beckoned. “Get up here, Willis,” he said. “Every poet needs his muse.”

Mr Willis, a craggy-faced man with unruly long hair and a badly broken nose, clambered up to join him, beer in hand. “Fred Willis,” Mr Billings announced to the room, and Mr Willis received a cheer of his own.

Mr Billings cleared his throat and spread his shoulders wide. “I haven’t thought up a title yet,” he said. “But I think you will recognise it.” He cleared his throat again. “Oh dearest Fred,” he said directly to Mr Willis, hand on heart, “most glorious king, I’ll of thy lovely tresses sing.” The room went into instant uproar, and even James raised his eyebrows. _Brawl_ , he mouthed very clearly over at Thomas, but Thomas was too taken aback by the audacity of the poem to respond. 

Mr Billings had to shout to be heard over the cheers and boos and laughter. “Do thou my head and heart inspire,” he bellowed, “to grow my own as I desire.”

Mr Willis made to very quickly climb back down, but Mr Billings gripped his arm firmly and pulled him back. “Thee, thee alone I’ll invocate,” he beseeched him loudly, “for I do much abominate to call the barber to mine aid.”

Half a dozen men from the other table filed out of the room, past the serving girl Maria, who gripped her serving tray tightly and stared up at Mr Billings in dismay. 

“Which is the priggish use and trade of some that handsome would be thought, and yet they come to worse than naught!” Mr Billings finished triumphantly, kissing Mr Willis on the side of his head and beaming widely across the room, to wild applause from his own acquaintances and a vastly mixed reaction from the rest of his audience, from tumultuous laughter to loud accusations of blasphemy. 

Mr Willis hurriedly climbed down from the table, but Mr Billings, instead of following him, raised his hand in the air and drew in a deep breath. “Da da-da da-da da-da,” he said, maintaining the rhythm of the doggerel, “Da da-da da-da da-da. Nor will I laud, no, not in jest, that which I know Maud doth detest!” He pointed at his own half-bald head then, grinning wide and proud. He had bread thrown at him then, and a single heavy mug was tossed from the other table, missing him by several feet and nearly hitting a man who had risen to leave. Mr Billings quickly jumped down from the table, only saved from falling flat on his face by the arms of his companions. 

“I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” James shouted over the clamour. 

“It is not yet a brawl,” Thomas shouted back, watching as the man who had nearly been hit was quickly spoken to and subdued by the most senior of the servers, who had come out of the kitchen to help quell the disturbance. Half a dozen more left the room after him, their expressions ranging from mildly disapproving to utterly irate. 

Another man was climbing up onto the table where Mr Billings had been, this one much less steady on his feet and requiring a great deal of assistance from those around him. He swayed as he stood upright and shouted, “The road is made of shit and mud, and all our food is rotted. We made it here so give a cheer and let’s get fucking sotted!”

Thomas was not sure whether he winced at the effort at poetry or at the volume of the cheer that the effort earned, but at least he was not alone in it. James looked as though he had just swallowed curdled milk, thick with clots. 

“I fear Billings will have been the best of them,” James said after the cheering died down, as the man made every attempt to climb off the table and was stymied at every turn by the behaviour of his own limbs. “This is an even worse ordeal than I had thought.”

Thomas did not much enjoy the beer that was served in the taverns he had frequented so far, but it was tempting to drink more of it if only to dull his senses, both physical and aesthetic. But James edged his chair around to sit closer next to Thomas, and so he stayed his hand and waited to listen to whatever he might have to say.

“There is a man who has been watching us,” James said clearly into Thomas’s ear. “He arrived the same day we did, and I have seen him every night since.” James was watching the next prospective poet climb onto the table, so Thomas could not follow his eye to see the man he spoke of. This was, no doubt, deliberate on James’s part. Thomas and subterfuge did not always go hand in hand, and he would quite possibly give the game away if he was fully informed of it.

“What do you think he means by it?” Thomas asked.

“Perhaps he is an admirer,” said James, leaning away again.

“Of whom?”

James gave him an amused look, settled back in his chair and took a drink. “Of you, I should think,” he said. “You are the taller.”

Thomas appreciated that James’s willingness to speak so lightly meant he was not overly worried about this man and who he might be, but the fact he had raised the matter with Thomas at all meant it was not nothing. This venture they had embarked upon had been perilous as soon as they had begun it in those early days of spring: leading slave-hunters astray, sabotaging their efforts and seeking out those who might be sympathetic or helpful to the cause. Three weeks ago, James had killed a man who had turned on them when he had realised their true intentions, and five days after that he had killed another, who had had a wounded, stumbling runaway in his sights and was set to pull the trigger. Now more than ever there could be no turning back from any of it. Thomas did not fault James for his actions, either morally or strategically, but the danger they were in was ever-growing. There were great forces that could and would be mobilised against the two of them if news of their deeds came to light.

But Thomas must not let his mind leap to the least favourable outcome of the situation, not when there was no evidence that any of it might come to pass. He would focus instead on the current situation as it presented itself and do what he could to positively address it. “Perhaps he is simply staying in town for his own reasons,” he suggested, “and he watches us because he is suspicious of seeing us here every night. Perhaps he thinks we follow him.”

James tolerated the suggestion with the same generosity with which he tolerated Thomas’s repeated suggestions that he should more than occasionally present himself sociably to strangers. “Perhaps.”

“You do not recognise him, do you?” Thomas asked, as the thought occurred to him despite every effort he was making not to allow doom or catastrophe into his mind.

“You are wondering whether he recognises me,” James said without a moment’s pause. “I am not inclined to think so, but it is difficult to say one way or the other.”

James had agreed some weeks ago that enough time had passed that they did not need to be as cautious about populated areas as they had been in the beginning. His hair had grown out only slowly but now curled around his ears and along the nape of his neck, threatening to fall into his eyes whenever he went hatless. It irritated him no end, but he had resolved to wear it long again and so in the meantime could do nothing but tolerate this most inconvenient of stages. Thomas liked it, and he liked the short beard he wore as well, which he kept trimmed and even and was so unlike anything Thomas had seen on him before. Surely precious few still alive would recognise James as Captain Flint, when he had not only changed his appearance but also his public demeanour, now making every attempt to carry himself in a way designed to have him fade into the background of any room he was in – efforts which did not always entirely succeed but were far from being an outright failure. Surely nobody would look at this man drinking quietly in the corner of a tavern, dressed in plain travelling clothes with no traces of finery or jewellery, and have any inkling of who he had been.

But now the possibility had taken root in his mind Thomas could not rid himself of it, and if he did not check it, it would ruin him. “What do you propose we do?” he asked James, keeping his voice low.

“Stay in this town until he leaves it,” said James. “We have nowhere pressing to be. If he remains here idle, then we know he is likely here for us. If he leaves, we can leave in a different direction. If he meets someone here, we will see who it is.”

“What if we were to speak to him?”

James’s mouth pressed tight together and his brows furrowed a little, but he remained silent, inviting Thomas to continue. The noise in the room was lower now, the impromptu poetry recital having come to an end and been replaced by a string of sorrowful drinking songs. Most of the other customers had retired for the night.

“It is not inconceivable that we might notice him and yet not suspect anything is awry,” Thomas said. “If he is here alone, we could simply reach out in a way most would consider sociable.”

“If he realises that we suspect him, it could turn very dangerous very quickly,” James said seriously. “Is that what you want?”

For all that he had been relearning his way around a sword, for all that he had had cause to use it more than once over the last couple of months, Thomas truly did not want to fight. There was a risk of harm to James and a risk to himself. It would attract the kind of attention they were resolutely attempting to evade. More than that, Thomas was still of the opinion that violence ought to be avoided as a matter of principle and not used to resolve problems other than as a last resort. What had once been an ironclad belief was now a strongly-held opinion; whatever his future might hold in store, Thomas was determined that he would never abandon it entirely.

But he could not deny that this was a game of absolutes they were playing. If James was recognised or if people came to realise that he and Thomas were aiding those they claimed to be hunting and turning on those who truly did hunt, the last resort would arrive quickly, with any danger unlikely to be able to be prevented or mitigated. If they were committed to this path, which by now they undeniably were, then that commitment would need to be defended, and there was no doing that halfway. Thomas did not want conflict, but he did want resolution, and he saw no sense in delaying it. “It is not what I want,” he said. “But it might be the best thing.”

“I want to be very clear,” said James, leaning in close again and speaking much lower. “If I suspect he knows who I am, or if I suspect he is gathering information for someone who does, if it appears that he is in any way an enemy to our mission, if he suspects for one moment that we are thinking any of these things, violence will be necessary, and it will be final and irrevocable.”

“We need to know what his motive is,” said Thomas. “If we simply flee from him, he will be free to take whatever information he has gathered back to whomever he is gathering it for.”

James nodded. “And if he dies, that is mightily suspicious in itself to anyone he is working for or with.”

Thomas did not know how James had lived like this for so long, always having to calculate dangers, to decide between fight and flight, to conduct himself as in war on a daily basis. Perhaps he was made for it, in a way that Thomas simply was not.

“Perhaps he is simply an admirer,” James said again.

“Perhaps our simultaneous arrival is mere coincidence,” said Thomas.

“Perhaps.” James looked to the far end of the second long table, which was near-empty now, raised one hand a little off the table and beckoned to one particular man sitting alone, who looked around himself then sighed, rose and came to and join them. He was a very small man, dark haired and dark eyed, pale and elfin. He collected a chair on his way and joined James and Thomas at their table with no self-consciousness, offering them a fleeting smile and leaning one elbow on the table.

“I knew you’d seen me,” he said to James. His voice was breathy and light, Welsh, a little rushed. “I thought you might have slit my throat last night while I slept.”

Thomas laid a hand on James’s forearm. The tension in it slowly eased, but the intensity in James’s glare did not lessen in the least.

“I saw you shoot Charlie Cuthbert,” the Welshman continued. “Did you know that the woods where you left his body were within view of the spot where his cousin and his cousin’s mistress meet and fuck secretly, away from the eyes of their families?”

“Speak plainly,” James said, low and commanding. “What is your business?”

“Oh, I moved him for you,” the man said. “They won’t find him. Don’t worry about that.”

“If you do not –”

Thomas tightened his grip on James’s arm. “Why?” 

The man’s eyes turned to Thomas, flicked down to his hand on James’s arm and then back up to his face. “I wanted to watch you some more,” he said. “I did not want you to be hunted down and hanged as murderers. More to the point, when a man like that is found dead, suspicion falls on all of us who work against him, myself included.”

James was still glowering, and his silence spoke of restraint and self-discipline more than a lack of anything he might wish to say, but there was something in this man’s shining black eyes that resonated with Thomas, something in his look that suggested that a kindred spirit sat before them. He could not put his finger on what it was; certainly nothing in the man’s manner or his words spoke to trustworthiness or any abundance of moral character. But Thomas’s capacity to believe in men had not fully died in him, and with James by his side, who believed in no man but Thomas and always expected betrayal, Thomas had some leeway to allow himself to trust.

“My name is Sam Puw,” the Welshman said to break the silence that had arisen, flashing them a wide, shining grin that vanished in a trice. “I do not know your names, and I will not ask you for them. Perhaps after this night we will go our separate ways, and I certainly don’t want you keeping me in the back of your minds as a threat, as someone who knows too much. So I will call you John and Adam, and we can go from there for the time being. How will that be?”

“Why have you been watching us, Mr Puw?” Thomas asked, as James seemed determined to maintain his silence.

“I have spoken with some of those you have assisted,” he said, his voice conspiratorially low and his delivery a little more theatrical than Thomas thought necessary. “The lad with the broken arm, you’ll remember, who you killed Charlie for. He told me he didn’t know you and had never asked you to help him. He said it was all as much a surprise to him as it had been to Charlie. So I thought, hm, this would all work a lot better if you had a little more information to hand and could direct people like him to safe places where they might find allies waiting to help them along their way.”

“Allies,” James said flatly. 

Mr Puw raised an eyebrow and gave James what Thomas considered a reasonably impudent stare. “You are not the only ones in this land with a conscience and a bit of courage to go with it,” he said. “There are a few of us about.”

“Is that so.”

“Well, sort of. There are a lot of thinkers. There’s a lot of philosophy and theology and a lot of politics. I was a minister, you see, and when all you have to offer is words, there’s not a lot that gets done. If you two are what you seem to be, I will quite gladly believe God himself has sent you to us as a rather concrete and comprehensive answer to my prayer.”

James grinned darkly, and Thomas knew something highly unfriendly was going to come out of his mouth. “You have a network,” he said quickly, before it could.

“I wouldn’t say a network,” Mr Puw said as James glowered at Thomas. “I would say at this point what I have is contacts and some present ability to induce them into cooperating. I have connections to some highly disparate parties with common goals, vastly different ideas and not much experience collaborating.”

“And what is your role in it?” said James.

Mr Puw got rather an ironic glint in his eyes. “Consider me Hermes,” he said.

“I would rather not,” said James. “I would rather know what it is you do and why you do it.”

“I’m sure you would,” said Mr Puw, nodding his head in understanding. “As I would dearly like to know what it is you do and why you do it, and yet I do not ask.”

“Consider me Odysseus,” said James. 

Mr Puw was completely still then for the very first time Thomas had seen, looking intently at James. “I do not know what to make of that,” he said sincerely. “I do not know what to make of that at all.”

“Make whatever you like of it,” James said breezily. Then he sat back and took a casual swig from his mug.

“I must say this is going much better than I thought it might,” Mr Puw said, reverting instantly to his earlier, more affected manner. “You have made an overture to me and saved me the trouble of making an overture to you, and I am still breathing, unbattered by blunt object or words promising violence, not bleeding from anywhere at all. I am feeling much more optimistic about the whole affair than I did upon waking this morning.”

“We have been hoping to find others with whom we can work,” Thomas said, hoping that if he spoke plainly and directly, Mr Puw might return to his less contrived manner of speech. “You are the first we have met who has claimed to be so. You can understand our caution.”

“Of course I can,” Mr Puw said, only a little more soberly. “But I am here all alone, and I know he can fight, and you probably can too, and you are twice my number and both twice my size. I can assure you I am more frightened of you than you are of me.”

“You don’t act it,” James observed.

Mr Puw laughed. “No,” he said. “That is my great gift, you see. I barely know myself when I am not in mortal peril and fearing for my life. I am quite comfortable being terrified. I believe it brings out the best in me. No breath is as sweet as the one that may yet be your last.”

“We were considering killing you,” James said, slouched now in his chair with mug in hand. “Just now, before I called you over, I said if we suspected anything was amiss, or if we believed you suspected anything was amiss, we would very likely have to kill you. We were in perfect agreement on that topic.”

Mr Puw nodded, wilting a little under James’s gaze but not lowering his eyes.

“Personally, I was considering killing you anyway, just to be safe,” James continued. Thomas watched Mr Puw’s Adam’s apple jump up and down in his throat and his expression wobble a little under the full force of James’s gaze. James nodded and emptied his drink, slamming the mug back down onto the table a little harder than was necessary. “I hope I do not have to,” he said. “There are only so many corpses a man can leave behind him before it starts to become a real problem.”

“Yes, exactly,” said Mr Puw, leaping at the opportunity to put the conversation back on his terms. “And I have hidden one for you already, you know. Poor Charlie Cuthbert.”

“That makes one less than I thought I had left behind me,” James said, his tone ominous. “It makes room for one more.”

“You could say that,” said Mr Puw. “Indeed, you could say that. Me, I like to think that if I remain both alive and in business with you, that would give you even more room in which to move. I could serve as a kind of enduring buffer against discovery and woe.”

“Perhaps,” said James.

“We intend to continue travelling,” Thomas said. “What are your own plans?”

“My plans?” Mr Puw said.

“Don’t play the fool,” James snapped. “Your plans.”

“My plans were to keep an eye on you and approach you if I thought it wise. I had not bothered to make a plan past that point. There were far too many variables to consider.”

“If you are in earnest when you propose some kind of collaboration, then perhaps we should travel together for a short time,” Thomas suggested, noting as he did the relief that came over Mr Puw when he turned from James to face Thomas instead. “We can learn what we must of each other and see if there is any way forward together.”

“Travel with you?” Mr Puw said, smiling that fleeting smile once more. “That is an uncommonly generous invitation.”

Something flashed in James’s eyes, a sudden burst of emotion quickly shuttered. “This is not friendship,” he said with sudden and genuine hostility. “Do not for one moment think this is friendship.”

“I do not think this is friendship,” Mr Puw said immediately and dutifully, but there was a spark of interest in his eyes that Thomas did not like at all. It was unlike James to go so much further than necessary when he and Thomas played this game, and there was no doubt that this man they played it with was sharp enough to take note of the overreaction. The look James was directing Mr Puw’s way was genuinely furious as it had not been up to this point, and Thomas could see something dark and dangerous brewing behind his eyes.

“Go,” Thomas said to its target, on whose face curiosity had been quickly replaced with trepidation. “I will speak with you in a moment.”

He was obeyed without hesitation, the small man hastily pushing back his chair and weaving through tables to vanish out the door. 

“James,” Thomas said. “He is gone.”

James turned to him, malevolence quickly replaced with exasperation. “I can see that he is gone,” he said with forced calm.

“What has upset you?”

James reached for his mug, saw it was empty and shoved it away again in disgust. He stared at Mr Puw’s empty seat, his expression dark and closed. “This is how it started,” he said, his words like slabs of stone. “With Silver.”

“It will not happen that way again,” Thomas said. “I will not let it.”

Thomas’s immediate response and the bluntness of his words seemed to shock James out of feeling any emotion at all. He sat there mutely a moment, his face drawn and blank, and then he looked at Thomas as though he saw the whole world. “Is it so simple,” he said, the question seemingly directed inward despite the intensity with which he regarded Thomas.

“It is so simple,” Thomas assured him. “I was not there then, and I am here now. It will not happen that way again.”

“I see.” James looked away and reached out to his mug, before remembering again that it was empty. He let his hand drop onto the table instead, flat and heavy. Thomas wanted desperately to reach out and hold it to solidify his pledge, but upon looking up and seeing Thomas’s expression James withdrew his hand into his lap, looking around as though only now remembering where they were. There were perhaps a dozen men scattered around the room now; all the travelling party had left. There was a low murmur of conversation and nothing more.

“And he is not the same man,” Thomas said more quietly. 

“I know,” James said, breathing deeply and visibly forcing himself to relax. “I know. He is far from the same man.”

“Do you believe what he says?”

“I think he is likely in earnest,” James said grimly. “The value of his contacts and their supposed cooperation is yet to be seen. I have grave doubts.”

“You will need to be civil if we are to travel with him,” Thomas said mildly.

“I can be civil.”

“I know you can be,” Thomas said, allowing the smallest of smiles to cross his lips. “I said you will need to be.”

James inclined his head once. “I will be so,” he said solemnly. “For you.”

“Not for me,” Thomas rejoined, and James instantly looked up at him, laughter in his eyes. The intended _for the sake of our vital task_ died on Thomas’s tongue, and James grinned.

Bessie came around and refilled both their mugs, offering them no more than a weary smile before moving to the next table. James, who had been so eager to drink only a moment ago, cradled his full mug between two hands and looked thoughtfully over it at Thomas. “I know you have been waiting for something like this,” he said. “I know how much you want to be part of something that is more than just the two of us. I promise I will give it every chance, but you know I will not hesitate to act if I suspect something is amiss.”

“I know you won’t,” Thomas told him. “And so does he.”

“Good,” James said darkly. Then he sighed long and deep and pushed his mug away from him. “But you will insist I be civil all the same.”

“You have already assured me that you will.”

“I am a soft-hearted fool,” James declared, getting to his feet.

Thomas smiled. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr Billings' masterpiece here is a knock-off of A Prayer Unto Christ by Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan and poet. Sorry, Michael.


	25. A Story is True - Day 233

Thomas sat beside George Dalton under the guard of one grim-faced French colonial marine, who stood a few yards away from their bench with his musket held across his body, looking quite uncomfortably warm standing in the direct sunlight in his thick blue and red jacket. The jacket was not a particularly good fit, being loose around the shoulders and long in the arm, and his trousers were rather more brown than they were grey. 

By contrast to its soldiers, the fort looked in near-perfect condition. Fort Toulouse had been conceived of and built in only the previous year, Thomas was informed, at the confluence of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa rivers at the very edge of French territory, and he could well believe that the twenty or so soldiers occupying it had undertaken the vast majority of the work. Thomas watched three of them working together to construct a wooden platform in a corner of one of the bastions, and he saw discipline and dogged professionalism but very little in the way of camaraderie or spirit. 

Indeed, there had been very little reaction among the French when the Creek trading party had arrived with three Englishmen in tow. They had been suspicious but not particularly curious, and when Captain Marchand had ordered all but three of his men back to their duties, those remaining had appeared just as disgruntled as those who had been made to go. For all that there was presently no war between their countries, Thomas had thought they might have made more of an impression. Instead, he, James and George had rather unceremoniously been separated from each other and the trading party to be questioned. Thomas’s officer, a Mr Leclerc, had asked his name, his place of birth, his religion and his intentions in Louisiana and then sent him out again to wait on a low bench between the palisade and three pigs roasting slowly on spits nearby. A few minutes later George had joined him, attempting a friendly nod at the soldier standing guard and scowling bitterly when he received nothing but a blank stare in return.

“If your man McGraw fucks this up for me,” he said to Thomas after a few minutes sitting and waiting, “I’m going to have very serious words with him.”

For a while, when they had been ten prisoners travelling westward from Savannah together, Thomas had thought he might eventually come to an understanding with George, though he knew there was vanishingly little chance they would ever become friends. Then Lako had arrived, and George had been thrice outvoted, and the mild amiability he had mustered to that point had been quickly replaced with the hostility and hauteur Thomas was quite familiar with from Savannah. Once in Kasihta, Thomas had paid him little attention, being principally occupied with James’s treatment and care and devoting the rest of his time to ensuring he fulfilled his obligations as a guest. He had known that George was behaving poorly, but it had been well outside his area of influence and, quite frankly, his area of interest. William had come a few times to complain to Thomas that George Dalton would now speak to Tracy and nobody else and that he was generally making a nuisance of himself, and Tracy had once expressed the same frustration, but in passing and in milder terms.

They had spent nearly two months living in Lako’s village, and Thomas had learned a great deal from their healers as James had slowly come back to health. When the trading party was due to leave for Fort Toulouse and James had declared himself ready to leave with it, Thomas had nothing to offer them but heartfelt words and his very best wishes by way of thanks. Those had been accepted and returned in kind, along with a packet of dried herbs and a little woven ball that smelled strongly of them, to be set by their heads at night as they slept. 

Taking George out of their village, never to return, went some way to repaying the Creek for their kindness, but that became a much less appealing prospect when everyone else who had come from Savannah decided they would stay. Travelling with George was one thing; travelling with George as the only person he deigned to speak to was something infinitely more aggravating. George did not like James or Thomas and made that plain, but his self-image required that he have an audience, and the two of them were all that remained. After only two days of it, Thomas had thoroughly understood why Tracy, as George’s old favourite, had made the decision he did, and each day afterwards had only irritated him more.

Thomas would be quite happy if he never spoke to George again; he was certainly in no mood to carry on a conversation with him now, while James was and remained in the hands of the French. But his comment had been objectionable, and if Thomas made a point of objecting to it, then at least that might distract him from the worst of his worries. “You would not be here at all if it were not for my man McGraw,” he pointed out. “You know that perfectly well.”

George’s expression grew even sourer. “You both should have stayed with the Indians like the rest of them,” he said. “These men will know him for a soldier.”

“Then he will know how to speak to them better than you or I.”

“He certainly seems to be doing so at length,” George said ominously.

The man watching them hissed for them to be quiet, and so Thomas refrained from responding and returned his attention to the men working in the bastion. When he had first come into the fort, his heartbeat had quickened and his throat had grown dry at being surrounded so suddenly by armed men in uniform and having the gate so firmly closed behind him. The longer he watched the business of the fort, the less like soldiers and more like labourers they appeared; even the most compassionate of the guards in Savannah had never lifted a finger to assist any prisoner in their duties.

But of course, a great deal had likely changed since Thomas had last been there. 

It was fifteen minutes before James was brought over to them. He and the lanky Frenchman whose custody he was in both talked and laughed as they walked, and Thomas took great enjoyment from the simple shock on George’s face. He made no point of it, though, keeping his silence as James and his guard shook hands and the guard departed, leaving James to come and sit down on Thomas’s other side with a satisfied grunt. 

“He was in the vanguard at Vélez-Málaga,” James said by way of general announcement. “On the _Perle_.”

Thomas reached back in his mind to what James had told him of Vélez-Málaga so many years ago. “And you were on the –”

“The _Cambridge_ ,” James said.

“You were on opposite fucking sides of that,” George said, his words biting despite there being no logical reason for him to be displeased.

James shrugged. “It was a long time ago. We are now quite properly united in our disdain for the Spanish, in accordance with the wishes of our superiors in Europe.”

George let out a disgusted breath. “You talk so much shit it’s a wonder they can’t smell it.”

James just gave him a faintly amused smile and then turned a real one on Thomas. “He said there is no particular directive that would prevent us taking up residence around Mobile Bay. We will simply need to abide by law and custom wherever we go.”

Their guard was watching them with a frown but seemed reluctant to silence them again, and Thomas could only put it down to the manner of James’s arrival and his manner now that he had arrived. Thomas had the impression he spoke very little English, but he could not be certain enough of that to speak unguardedly in front of him.

“I have offered our assistance in the transportation of trade goods downriver into Mobile when the next departure is due,” James continued. “I am informed a boat will arrive within the next fortnight.”

There were only three structures completely built inside the walls of the fort; it seemed insufficient room to quarter even those who were stationed here permanently. “We must stay here a fortnight?” he asked, trying not to sound as dismayed as he felt.

James shook his head. “They would not have us a fortnight,” he said. “Not in the fort. But the Alibamu have a village a little way to the north that the French have been at pains to cultivate a friendly relationship with, and it is possible that we might make ourselves useful there in the meantime.”

“More Indians,” George said flatly. 

“You do whatever the fuck you want,” James said with no small distaste. “Your future is not my concern.”

“I would prefer not to spend any more time under armed guard than is absolutely necessary,” Thomas said as George smouldered.

“Quite,” said James. “So if Captain Marchand and the Alibamu both approve, we will be escorted there and then summoned back at the time of departure.”

“There’s no way they would approve of us,” George said. “They won’t trust us any more than we trust them.”

“If relations are friendly between the Creek and the Alibamu, they will likely accept references from those we travelled here with,” Thomas said. “So, yes, perhaps they will not be inclined to welcome you.”

James rose to his feet, the first to see Captain Marchand approaching them. Thomas and George quickly followed suit.

“It is bold for English to come so far,” the captain said, looking over the three of them with sky-blue eyes that stood out quite extraordinarily in his square, weather-beaten face. “Many of my men are not very happy to see you.”

Thomas thought his men seemed unhappy about much more than that, but he would make no argument about it.

“We wish only to pass through,” James said. “We had no wish to do so surreptitiously and thereby arouse any suspicion, so we thought it best to come and announce ourselves.”

“Giroux tells me you are a Navy man.”

“I was, sir,” James said with a nod. “Many years ago.”

“And now you are what?”

“Now I am weary of it,” James said. “Now I seek peace.”

The captain chuckled. “You have come to a strange place for that.”

“Yes, I have,” James said. “But there is more chance of it here than where I have come from.”

The captain turned to Thomas. “Leclerc tells me you are a Protestant Englishman.”

“That is so,” Thomas said. 

“You will not find many of your kind in la Louisiane. You will not be treated kindly if you make it known.”

“I do not intend to make any issue of it,” Thomas said. “I too seek only peace.”

“Leclerc says also that your French is very, very good. He tells me that he thought for one moment he was back in la Patrie, taking orders from high above. I do not think that is the impression you will want to give if you are seeking to remain unremarkable here.” Before Thomas had a chance to answer him, he spoke to George. “You are neither a Protestant nor a soldier, I am told.”

“I most certainly am not,” George said. 

“I understand that you are not here in search of peace but in search of purpose.”

“That is correct.”

“I am told, in fact, that you do not like either of these gentlemen in the least and that you wish to part from them as soon as you reach Mobile.”

“That is correct.”

“Your French,” Captain Marchand said, tilting his head from side to side with a little grimace, “not so good. You are fortunate that Tessier has more English than most.”

“I intend to remedy that without delay,” said George, who had made no effort at doing so, as far as Thomas was aware, for the entire duration of their journey.

The captain frowned over the three of them again. “It is a strange thing for you to have come all this way.”

“One must walk a long way when one walks away from England,” James said. “Her reach grows longer by the day.”

“It will never extend as far as this,” the captain said. “I can assure you of that.”

James looked at him rather sceptically but offered no challenge to his words.

“I’m sure it won’t,” George said. “You appear to have things very well in hand. I only hope you will not rely too heavily on alliances with Indians to defend your borders.”

“Do not bring your English superior nonsense into la Louisiane,” the captain warned him. “Our king may have signed a treaty with yours, but as a people our memory is longer than just a few years.”

“I did not mean any disrespect to you,” George said, and if Thomas had not known him, he might have thought him sincere. “I apologise if I have spoken out of turn.”

“That approach will serve you much better,” the captain said with an approving nod and a smile. “Continue with that.”

George pursed his lips and managed a small nod in return. 

“Good. At any rate, I have no cause to detain you and will see you on your way. We have noted your names and your appearance, and so I hope I will not hear any reports that might cause me to regret the decision I am making today.”

“I understand it may be possible for us to accompany the next supply boat down to Mobile when it arrives,” Thomas said. “We would be very grateful if that were the case.”

“Yes,” said the captain. “I have sent a man to speak with the Alibamous to see if they might take you in for the time that intervenes. If they agree, then you will have to work, but you will be under their protection, you will be housed and you will be fed.”

“That is more than satisfactory,” James said. “Thank you.”

“While these discussions take place, I will have Gosselin take you out somewhere you can wait where you do not disturb my men and my men do not disturb you. You can see they are not pleased about having you here, so it is best that you are not. Gosselin, emmenez ces hommes à la rivière, quelque part d’où les Alibamous peuvent les trouver. Laissez-les là et revenez rapidement pour aider à la palissade. Allez vite.”

“Oui, capitaine,” Gosselin said, shifting the head of his musket from one shoulder to the other. “Venez, messieurs.”

* * *

There was not much to be said until word came back from the Alibamu; Thomas was glad that George had decided to pace back and forward between the river and the fort, pointedly separate and pointedly silent, while James and Thomas enjoyed a companionable silence among the trees by the river bank. They sat facing each other, each leaning back against the trunk of a tall tree, with the river to one side and the fort to the other. The shade of the trees and the cool river air went a long way to easing the strong summer heat. Thomas leaned his head back against the tree behind him and closed his eyes to relish the quiet moment they were in, listening to the rustling of the leaves above him and the steady flow of the river below.

He was half-asleep when James spoke quietly into the silence between them. “If I was not here, you would have stayed,” he said. “You would have stayed in Kasihta with all the rest of them.”

“If you were not here, I would still be in Savannah trying to tame David Mortimer,” Thomas said peacefully. “It is a futile hypothetical.”

“But if we had left Savannah and then one morning I had simply not woken up, you would not now be travelling into Louisiana.”

Every muscle in Thomas’s body tensed at once; he opened his eyes and fixed James with his most blistering glare for having the nerve to mention such a thing. 

James had been expecting it; he met Thomas’s eyes with a wary, somewhat apologetic resolve. “It was possible,” he said, his voice still oddly quiet. “These things do tend to have worse consequences the more often they occur.”

Thomas’s fury only grew the longer he stared at James and thought about what he had said. “If you so much as knock your head on a branch or the ground or a doorframe, I am taking you into seclusion for a full year of bed rest and herbal remedies, as we have learned,” he said to James once he was in control of himself enough to speak rather than shout at him. “If you get yourself into a fight and come to seriously injure it, I will do so with the greatest of displeasure, and I will make it two years.”

“Yes, all right,” James said, quite unmoved.

“I am in earnest,” Thomas warned him. “I am completely and utterly in earnest.”

“I believe that you are,” James said. “I would, however, be vastly surprised if you could achieve it, given the position we find ourselves in.”

“I will find a way.”

“I will do all I can to ensure that we never have to find out,” James said. “But as regards my question…”

Thomas closed his eyes and leaned his head back again, willing both his heart and his mind to stop racing. “In such a circumstance, I would not have come all this way alone but for George Dalton,” he said. “You are correct.”

“You would have stayed with them all,” James said. “Do you miss them now?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“You do not wish we had stayed?”

Thomas opened his eyes to look at James and found him watching Thomas with an uneasiness he did not think would have been so openly displayed if Thomas had been looking at him all the while. But once Thomas had seen it, James did not hide it away. He sat there as he was and waited for Thomas’s answer.

“I did not want to stay there,” Thomas told him. “The life I want to make is with you.” When James’s expression did not change, Thomas lifted his head off the tree and leaned forward. “Do you doubt it?”

James frowned and looked away. “No,” he said. “No, I do not.”

“Do you doubt my judgement, then?”

James remained silent for a long moment and then looked back at Thomas. “You have always surrounded yourself with people,” he said. “You are happiest when you are part of something that is larger than yourself. I do not want you to hide yourself away on my account, not when you have already walked away from –”

“James, come here.”

Something cracked in James’s expression, but he pushed it away. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I want to say it, and if I go to you, I will not be able to.”

“Very well, then,” Thomas said. “Speak your piece.”

But now that he had been invited to speak, James struggled to begin. 

“You said I had already walked away,” Thomas prompted him. “You do not want me to hide myself away on your account, not when I have already walked away from … from those who remained in Kasihta, presumably.”

“And those who remained in Savannah,” James said. “These are men you have known for a very long time, men who have shared your experiences as I have not. I know you were close to some of them; I know you cared for them a great deal. I saw with my own eyes that they cared for you. You were loved there by many and respected by all but a few. How can you so easily separate yourself from all those people, all of those nearest to you, after what happened to you in London? How can you do this to yourself again?”

Thomas saw the shadow of old pain in James’s eyes and fancied that he knew where it came from. Thomas had been exiled from his home once and once only; it was James who had suffered it twice and still considered he had had a choice in it the second time around. “I was never in Savannah by choice,” Thomas said. “When my father had me removed from my home, I was put into Bethlem Royal Hospital. When I was taken from Bethlem, they put me on the _Margaret_. When they took me from the _Margaret_ , they delivered me to Mr Oglethorpe’s plantation. All this was done to me; I did not do it to myself.”

James listened intently, his face solemn and still. 

“My choice now,” Thomas continued, “is therefore not an echo of that but a defiance of it. I am not obliged to stay with those I came to care for in Savannah just because I was put there with them, whatever our shared experiences might have been. You offer me real choices, and you make things possible that I could not otherwise dream of. You I love more than anything in this world. I will stay with you, and I will cherish each moment that we have. It is not something I do to myself but rather for myself.”

“Since I left Padstow, I have never been truly welcome anywhere I have gone,” James said, holding Thomas’s gaze only with great effort. “I am expelled or sought to be expelled as a matter of course, wherever I might find myself. It seems to be my fate unavoidably; I do not want it to be your fate as well.”

“Our fates will be as they are,” Thomas said. “If they are fixed, then they are fixed. If we are expelled from Louisiana, then so be it. There are other places we can go.”

“You say that now,” James said grimly. “It is not as easy once you have come to call a place home.”

“If you are worried about this on my behalf, I tell you now there is no need to be. If you yourself are disturbed by it, then we will discuss that. But rest assured I have no doubts and no regrets about the path we are taking. I have chosen it freely, willingly and gladly.”

“All right,” James said, much more sincerely than he had a moment before.

“I know what I want,” Thomas said firmly, so there could be no mistaking his meaning. “I will have what I want.”

James smiled over at him, shaking his head. “Over the years, I have become quite accustomed to pursuing my own wishes and giving very little consideration to the wishes of those around me.”

“I have been accused of quite the same thing, in my time.”

“And here we bend over backward for each other.”

“I can be less accommodating, if you would prefer.”

James’s smile faltered a little, and a curious expression came over him. “I would,” he said quite seriously.

While Thomas took a moment to contemplate all the possible implications of such a comment and James sat and quietly watched him do so, George veered away from the line he had been pacing along and came to stand by them, scowling just as he had been from the moment the three of them had been escorted from the fort.

“What is it?” James asked him, not making even the smallest effort to mask his irritation.

“I’m going to request that I work in the fort until the boat arrives,” George announced. “I’m not having another week of being gawped at by Indians.”

“If you wouldn’t walk around glaring so awfully, I doubt they would stare at you so,” Thomas said mildly.

“They would,” George said. “But I am not going to argue with you about that.”

“Good,” said James. “Go and request to work in the fort, then.”

“That is not all I came here to say,” George said grudgingly. “I came here to say to you, McGraw, that I appreciate you arranging our passage to Mobile. I appreciate what you and Thomas made possible in Savannah. I have no intention of associating with you a second longer than is absolutely necessary, but I want to be very clear that none of your secrets will ever pass my lips under any circumstances. I will forget everything I have ever known about you as completely as I will forget that cursed place we met. You have my word on that.”

“I will also forget you as soon as may be,” James said, getting to his feet and shaking George’s hand. “It will be my very great pleasure to do so.”

Thomas followed his lead and held his hand out to George. “Likewise.”

“Right,” George said, nodding once at each of them. “Enjoy village life. I hope very much I will not be joining you there.” He turned on his heel and strode away.

“Thank God for that,” James said, watching him go. “He and the French deserve each other.”

Thomas went and stood beside him, nudging their shoulders together. “You have no real animosity toward the French,” he said, “or you would not now be going willingly to live among them.”

“You are quite mistaken,” James said. “There is no impediment to my living among those I have genuine animosity toward. I am quite practised in it.”

“You seemed to get on well enough with Mr Giroux.”

“I have gotten on well enough with any number of people I could not stand,” James said, giving Thomas a sidelong look. “What is your point?”

“I think you do a disservice to the French people with your comparison.”

“Perhaps,” James allowed. “We will see if you still defend them when we must live among them day in, day out.”

“I will not need to defend them if you do not provoke me to.”

“I do not provoke you to anything by insulting the French,” James said. “Do not blame me for your absurd compulsions.”

“Absurd compulsions?”

“I said absurd compulsions.”

“That is what I thought you said. I thought you liked my compulsions.”

“I like some of them,” James allowed.

“You like all of them.” 

James tilted his head to give Thomas a very particular look. 

Thomas smiled a little and took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “Every single one,” he said, pausing for emphasis between each word.

“All right,” James said with a wide, gleaming smile that was not at all congruent with such an admission of defeat. “I like them all.”

“That’s what I thought,” Thomas said, letting go of James’s hand again as two Indian men and a Frenchman in blue and red came out of the woods north of the fort and headed toward them.

“You talk to them,” James said. “I am unfairly biased against the French.”

“We will both talk to them,” Thomas said, starting a slow stroll in that direction. “I do not doubt that you will make a good impression, as you have already shown yourself quite capable of doing.”

“Flatterer,” James muttered, walking alongside him.

“Flatteur, perhaps.”

“Jesus,” said James. “We really are going into fucking France, aren’t we.”

“We certainly are.”

James sighed and picked up his pace a little. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get on with it, then.”


	26. A Story is Untrue - Day 233

The map was damp, and Thomas was hungry. The log cabin they had arrived in a few minutes earlier was small and cold, its fireplace empty and its few pieces of furniture decrepit. James stood over a table that was too low, the yellow light of their lantern shining down onto their map and up onto his face. He was the only warm thing in the room, the only thing that Thomas could bear to look at, the only thing that kept his heart beating and his lungs drawing breath. 

He wasn’t looking at Thomas, though. He frowned at the map, tucking dripping hair back behind his ears, rubbing at his mouth and nose as he considered their position. He was too absorbed in his thoughts to share them with Thomas; other than exchanging a quick look of relief once they had entered the cabin and closed the door against the rain, other than a quick look of something else once Thomas had taken his hood down, James had remained single-minded. 

They had been out here for six days now in the cold and rain of winter, searching for three men who had gone missing from their operation, and every day had been harder than the one before it. The futility of their task weighed on Thomas; he knew the sheer improbability of locating three men who either did not wish to be found or no longer could be. Each time they came to a bolthole and found it empty Thomas felt more hopeless about the whole affair and James became even more determined to see it through: grimmer, more withdrawn and more coldly tactical in ways Thomas was simply not accustomed to.

It could not be much past three o’clock in the afternoon, but the world outside was dark and wet and cold; Thomas did not relish the thought of going out in it again before nightfall. He eyed the small pile of wood by the fireplace and the single rope bed in the other corner of the room. They could light the fire, dry their wet clothes, warm their chilled bodies and take the time to prepare their dinneras a soup and not foul cubes of jelly consumed raw, but James might decide they should go out again, to seek one more possible location before calling it a night, and so Thomas could not afford to sink too deeply into that desire.

Thomas was hungry, and he had been so for days. As James moved his fingers thoughtfully over their map, Thomas sat atop the more sturdy of the two wooden crates in the room and stared into the fireplace, waiting. Before his departure from Savannah, the only time Thomas had ever been truly deprived of basic human comforts – food, water, shelter, sleep, companionship – had been in Bethlem and on the _Margaret_. In moments where hunger turned from an irritant into deprivation and when sleepiness became exhaustion, his body remembered it and dragged him back there, and in such a weakened state he did not have the mental discipline to fend off the past, to convince himself that those things were distant now and would never occur again. He knew quite definitely that he was in no danger of starvation; he knew they had provisions for another week, if not more. He knew these were things that it was normal for a man to have to endure and that he was luckier than most for not having to endure them very often, and yet the fear rode in the back of his mind, illogical and impossibly persuasive.

He had never spoken of this to James, and that was perhaps the real shame of it. He did not often speak of Bethlem, and never of its more mundane evils. There was cowardice in the way Thomas relied on James’s insight and observation instead of simply speaking to him of the things that pained him, however much Thomas might try to convince himself otherwise. He did not want James to think it was a matter of mere physical weakness that Thomas was slower, more uncertain and quicker to anger when they were living a more straitened existence, but nor was he willing to speak of its true cause. Thomas had been in Bethlem for no more than a few months, and then he had crossed the Atlantic in the _Margaret_ , and then it had been over. So many men had endured so much worse, and for longer. 

Thomas was hungry, and he hated how thoroughly he was unmanned by it.

“This rain will not let up,” said James. “Not before nightfall.” He spoke out loud generally rather than directly to Thomas, a commander giving his men the benefit of hearing his process of reasoning without inviting comment on it. “Travel will be slow, the ground treacherous and navigation near impossible. There is time to reach our next location, but it will leave little room for error. I think it best we do not attempt it today.”

He looked at Thomas then, seeking confirmation that he had heard and understood and making sure there was no dissent before continuing to speak. Thomas felt dissent brewing inside him, formless and without means of articulation. He was tired. He was hungry. He was in low spirits and feeling outside of himself. He wanted warmth and rest and an end to his hunger, and yet now he felt himself affronted by James’s suggestion that they end their day here, as he had himself been hoping they would. More than anything, in truth, he was provoked by the fact that it had not been truly a suggestion. He frowned at the fireplace, recognising the conflict inside his own mind, and he tried to assess the situation without resentment or grievance. 

In circumstances such as these, James should and did have the final word. They both knew it was so and had long ago agreed upon it. It would be James who led the way, they had agreed, and unspoken within that agreement was the fact that he would bear the greatest part of the danger, defending them against violence and dispensing it where necessary. It was not wrong that it was so, any more than it was wrong for Thomas to take the lead when a more personable approach was to their benefit, but those occasions sat easier on James than the reverse did on Thomas, and it did not reflect well on Thomas that it was so. He had been born to rule and raised to lead, and he had not been able to eradicate that from his make-up even after being brought so low in the world. He was a poor follower, a poor right-hand man and a man who continued to resist humility in arrogant defiance of the world and its logic.

“Thomas,” James said loudly. 

Thomas realised he had been staring into space while he thought and forced his attention to James, finding it far more of a struggle than was warranted. He felt hollow and brittle, stretched out and incomplete. It was cold still, and his coat was so very heavy with rain.

“What are you thinking?” James asked, and Thomas tried to come back to himself. He held no grudge against James for being impersonal or detached when there was business that needed to be done. He only ever was so when the circumstances dictated it, and he always came back the moment he needed to, as he had now. This was not a demand from a captain to his crew; this was James, asking Thomas. It did not make the question, however, any easier to answer.

“Thomas,” said James again. “What are you thinking?”

What was Thomas thinking? Where could he begin? “I am not suited to this,” he said.

James’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Thomas with sudden, intense calculation. “To what, precisely?”

_To following another, even when that person is you_ , Thomas thought, but, cowardly, he did not say it. 

“Eat something,” James advised, holding Thomas’s gaze for a moment before looking down again to the map. Thomas had been thinking how best to answer the question James had asked him; to have it withdrawn and replaced with a practical solution to what was a large part of his problem took a moment to come to terms with. He knew that James saw much and said little, preferring to keep his observations and assessments of people close to his chest. On those rare occasions when Thomas could draw him out in conversation on such topics – what an ungenerous soul might deem gossip – he demonstrated quite extraordinary insight, revealing a mind that was always working, assessing and calculating in a man who so often stood silent and forbidding. 

Thomas knew also that James looked after him, but rarely did he do so this openly. Rarely did James give Thomas this look that said, _Yes, I know you, and I know what is best for you, if you will listen._

James looked up again and offered Thomas a restrained little smile, an acknowledgement that this was somewhat out of the common way. “It will help.”

“The food has been strictly rationed,” Thomas pointed out, “by you.”

“Yes,” James said. “Because you have told me time and time again that it is best that you defer to my judgement when we are out like this.”

“Yes, I have.”

The look James gave Thomas was sympathetic and concerned. A strand of hair escaped from behind his ear, and water from it began dripping gently onto the table. “You do not appear to be deferring to it now.”

Thomas had not rebelled against Mr Oglethorpe and his plantation for all the time he had lived there, and yet he felt rebellion in him now. It made very little sense, on a practical level. “No, I don’t.”

“A mutiny, then,” James said softly. He carefully observed Thomas’s reaction to that, nodded to himself and thought for a moment. “I have faced worse mutinies.”

“For this to be a mutiny, then I must be your crew,” said Thomas.

“We have spent a great deal of time discussing my pride,” James said, and he said nothing more. Thomas felt the weight of the words left unsaid and knew it was high time he heard them spoken plainly to his face, but James was not confrontational in that way. He was unlikely to ever tell Thomas directly that he was being selfish or over-sensitive or irrational. His way was to manoeuvre, not to confront. Thomas knew how to manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre and could usually defend himself against it, and so James had apparently decided further measures were necessary, but even now he would not go so far as to insult or criticise. “Eat something,” he said again. “We will not be going any further today.”

“We could,” said Thomas. “Could we not?”

“No,” James said firmly, rolling up the map. “The conditions are not suitable.”

“You would go if you were on your own. You would not think twice about it.”

“I am not on my own,” said James, “and nor do I wish to be. I will start the fire.” He looked directly at Thomas then, and there was an undeniable challenge in his eyes. “Unless you would prefer to do it.”

Thomas was neither a child nor a fool. He knew that to make a decision about who would manage the fire was to implicitly accept James’s decision that it should be lit for the night. Thomas was neither a child nor a fool, but he felt like both, because he would sooner storm out into this rain in a temper to get his own way than he would acquiesce to James’s authority at this moment in time. His mood grew blacker than the weather, and yet the only target he had in his sights was James, who he would never and could never bring himself to hurt.

James walked around and sat on the second crate, leaving the lantern where it sat on the table. He liked to talk in shadow, did James, and though Thomas did not usually see its appeal, right now he was glad of it. There was light in the room, and there was darkness, and neither overwhelmed the other.

“Command does not sit well on me,” James said in a kind of brisk confession. “I am capable of it, but I am no more to be trusted with authority than any other man – far less, in truth, than many I have known. I was feared and followed, perhaps admired, but I was never loved. I never inspired devotion or true loyalty, only obedience, and that obedience was far from unquestioning.”

Thomas took a moment to puzzle over those words and think how James might put them to use in support of his argument, whatever his argument might be. He was not here ceding command to Thomas, and nor would he speak disparagingly of himself in order to flatter Thomas by comparison. It was not his way. 

“You and I, we do not play well with others,” he said, with what Thomas could only describe as an affectionate grimace. “We are too convinced of our own superiority to ever consider that our own opinions or our own solutions to problems may be eclipsed by another’s. I have learned to manage these tendencies in myself, out of necessity.”

Thomas began to see the path he went down but still could not divine its destination. “I have made some very wrong decisions in my time,” he said. “I am well aware of this.”

“Yes,” James acknowledged. “And yet here you are as obstinate and unyielding as ever.”

“I have spent the last decade of my life in complete subordination,” said Thomas. “I have certainly had to manage the tendencies you describe.”

“And you never wish to do so again,” James said. “You were born to power, and you believed it was innate and beyond question, and then you found out that it was not. You fell from a great height and landed at the very bottom, and it is from those extremities that you have come to understand the world. You have not yet come to terms with the middle.” There was something merciless about James this way, something both gentle and ruthless, something Thomas had not encountered in any other person he had known save Miranda. He spoke truths that were hard, with love in his heart. “I would much prefer to indulge you in this and in everything,” James said softly. “I think you know that I would.”

Thomas sat in admiration of James’s manipulation as much as he was frustrated by its effectiveness. “But on this point you believe you are in the right, and you are not prepared to consider my opinion,” he said, but there was no bitterness to the words, as there might have been only moments earlier. 

“Eat something,” James said, standing up again. “I will light the fire.”

Thomas wanted to insist on lighting it himself, but he was not a child and would not behave like one. He walked over to the rope bed where their packs lay, thinking how very fortunate he was that James did prefer to indulge him, that he loved Thomas and trusted him, that he gladly deferred to Thomas when the opportunity arose for him to do so. James, who was defined in so many ways by his refusal to submit, whether that be to the British Empire, to philosophical argument or to well-meaning advice, could be unaccountably docile and biddable when Thomas was in a position to direct him. When the roles were reversed, Thomas found no such pleasure in such an arrangement, even as he abided by it and convinced himself of its necessity. He considered asking James how he had created this exception to his usual practice; perhaps then Thomas could find a way to make an exception of his own for James.

But when Thomas thought of James’s genuine deference to Admiral Hennessey and his demeanour with Miranda, the deeply respectful way he spoke of his grandfather and his captain at La Hogue, he knew it was not about Thomas himself at all; it was the way James always loved when trust sat alongside it. It was not the love that was rare but the trust, and even more so now that one of the few he had ever trusted implicitly had betrayed him so completely and of the rest in the list, all but Thomas were dead and gone. Thomas was no exception; he was the last man standing in the field.

“It does not count as eating to only look at bags that contain food,” James said from where he piled up wood in the fireplace.

“Command does not sit well on you,” Thomas retorted, but he dug into his pack and drew out their rations, realising only as he did so that James’s words had not been a command or anything near to it. He ate one of their four remaining biscuits and hated that it did help, that he felt the tension retreat from his body as his hunger eased. He then picked out their small pot and two bouillons and took them to James, who was nearly ready to light the fire. “I am not at my best,” he allowed, kneeling beside the fireplace. “Not out here, not like this.”

“Nor am I,” said James.

“You are near to it,” Thomas said as he watched him quickly and effortlessly light the fire. “You are in your element. I envy you that.”

“I know you do not think of yourself as particularly brave,” said James, low and intent, suddenly taking a higher ground in a much more profound way than before as they both watched the fire crackle and take. “I know you consider it weakness to be ill at ease and vulnerable where I am not.”

Thomas’s chest swelled at those words, indignation rising to the front of his mind like a rising wave. He had thought James gentle, before; he was certainly not so now.

“I consider it courage,” James said, looking sideways at Thomas then away again into the growing fire. “I have seen men cowed and afraid, turning tail and running from fears both great and small. I have seen men whom fear has destroyed and those they have taken down with them in an effort to save themselves. I have seen men rise above their fear and men who lay one fear to rest only then to have another arise and bring them low. I have known men who suffered the same fear all their lives, defying it in one moment and brought low by it the next, with no choice but to gather what strength remained in them and face it again the next day. The fear all these men feel is the same, and none are wrong to feel it. If you defer to me on anything, defer to my judgement on this. There is no weakness whatsoever in fear, and there is no shame in having suffered.”

Thomas could not speak. Nobody had spoken to him like this before. Nobody.

“You would be the first to tell me so, were I struggling with such a thing. I should have said as much to you far earlier. I should not forget that we still need to be told the things we already know, the things we are so quick to say to others.”

“You are my heart,” Thomas said, once he had wrestled his raging emotions into words. He took James’s hand as they knelt together in front of the fire, which had taken hold of all but two pieces of firewood. “James McGraw, Flint, Smith. You are the very beating of my heart.”

“I should not have stayed silent on this for so long,” James said hoarsely, guilt dancing around his eyes. “I know that you suffer.”

“It is bearable,” said Thomas, shaking his head. 

“More bearable when not borne alone.”

“But I have not been bearing it alone.”

James looked at Thomas in a rather opaque fashion, rose to his feet and took off his coat, throwing it over the table and then turning back to Thomas. His clothing underneath was mostly dry and his hair had stopped dripping, though it still clung wetly to his head.

Thomas rose and went to him. He reached out a hand and laid it on his shoulder, as he had done for the first time so many years ago. James did not recoil from him but stood quiet and composed, waiting for Thomas to do as he would. “I am the luckiest man on this earth,” Thomas said, setting his other hand atop James’s other shoulder.

“Take your coat off,” James suggested, seeming quite unmoved. “You will warm much faster without it.”

Thomas reminded himself that James’s contrariness was something he supposedly found appealing; at the moment, it was a plague upon his life. He intended to take his coat off, yes indeed, but not for such an uninspired reason as that.

“I will boil some water,” James added, unmoved by Thomas’s exasperated expulsion of breath. “We should eat.”

“I did eat,” said Thomas.

“And once we have eaten, and we are warm, then the night shall be ours,” James continued, barely-suppressed mischief now in his eyes. “I see no reason to delay that any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

Thomas rarely was faced with an insurmountable argument, but he found himself so here. He took his hands off James and went to lay his coat on the other side of the table, while James busied himself with setting water to boil.

The broth was far from appetising, but it was warm and sustaining and James had added in enough salt that it did have some semblance of taste. They sat together and drank it from the two small earthenware bowls James had become attached to, warm and dry beside the crackling fire.

“This network we are a part of,” Thomas said, breaking the silence that had existed between them for the past fifteen or twenty minutes. “Do you think it is sound?”

James shook his head. “I do not think it is sound,” he said. “I think it is necessarily fragmented, vulnerable in many places and therefore able to quarantine such danger to only that part infiltrated or destroyed.”

“Disintegration as defence,” said Thomas. “It isn’t much of one.”`

“It protects the people involved,” said James with a small shrug. “And until there is power accumulated and organised, the people involved are all there is to this thing. People can always start again. You seek permanence and stability; I warn you those things are a long way away, if they are in the future of this company at all.”

“Eight months ago, I would have given almost anything for just one night with you,” Thomas said. “I have had hundreds now, and it is not enough. I can never settle for only that which I am given; I always want more than I have.”

“I think I can find a way to bear these flaws in your character, given what I have gained from them,” James said. “If you were otherwise, I might never have had you.”

“What you have gained,” Thomas said. “What you have lost.”

James shrugged again and drank the last of his soup, putting his empty bowl down on top of Thomas’s where it already sat on the floor. “I do not want you perfect,” he said, his lack of interest in that concept plain. “I have never thought you perfect. A perfect man would not make his life with me.”

“You are –”

“I am a murderer,” James said frankly. “I am a pirate, I am a tyrant, and I am a traitor. By your own philosophy, all these things are in my nature and can never be removed from it. Yet here you are, thankful for all that I am.”

“You are a better man than I.”

James looked at Thomas in rank disbelief. “That is not a statement you can possibly defend,” he said.

“You strive to be good despite all that has befallen you.”

“I really don’t.”

“You strive to do good, then,” Thomas amended.

“And you do not?”

“Your path to it has been a great deal harder.”

“There is no shame in struggle, but there is no virtue in it either,” said James. “It is what it is.”

Eventually, James would have no choice but to accept a compliment Thomas gave him. In certain moods there was nothing he would not demand credit for, and in others he could weasel his way out of just about any positive comment Thomas directed his way. Thomas considered those latter times a direct challenge to him and one he was willing to meet head-on. “You are a braver man than I,” he tried next. 

“Perhaps,” James allowed. “I learned to be so younger. There is no courage in battle if the fear of it has been burned from you.”

“That is not what I mean,” Thomas said. “You speak of those deepest parts of yourself. You reveal yourself to me so completely and allow yourself to be seen.”

“Again I will say it,” said James, quieter now. “There can be no courage where there is no fear.”

Thomas shook his head. “You do fear,” he said. “I have seen it. You have shown it to me.”

“I have never feared that you would hurt me. Not once, in any way.”

Thomas was about to assert that what he had seen had most definitely been fear, surprised that James would deny it, but as he considered James’s words he realised that there was no contradiction in them at all. Back in the inn in Savannah in November, on the very worst of all the days the two of them had ever shared, James had said to him _If you had died, I never would have had to see myself through your eyes._ Thomas had rejected the notion at the time, thinking James was making assumptions about Thomas’s thoughts; now he reflected on it again, and he began to understand that it had not been so.

It was not James that Thomas feared when it came to baring his soul. He did not fear that James would hurt him; indeed, Thomas could not even imagine him doing so. It was fear of something else, something that James understood very well already and Thomas was only newly approaching in his conscious mind. James did not fear Thomas, but he had fought his way through fear when they had first become close, and he had spoken through fear again when they had come together for the second time and he told Thomas the truth of what he had been. It had not been fear of Thomas but of something older, deeper and far more sinister. James had understood this all along and Thomas had not, though he now began to see the shape of it.

“I have wasted so much of my life,” he said, bitterness flooding him. “I have learned nothing, achieved nothing, thrown so much away.”

“It was taken from you,” said James. 

“I invited it.”

James’s cheek twitched. “We have all made mistakes.”

“I thought I had come to know myself after all those years in Savannah,” said Thomas. “I had only buried myself, as I swore I never would.”

“I swore I would always be with you,” said James. “I left for Nassau on the day you were taken.”

“We both of us have failed,” Thomas said.

“Yes,” said James. “And we will do so again.”

“No, we will not.”

James smiled at him, bright and sudden. It was the smile he wore when Thomas neglected reason, bypassed logic and spoke directly from the heart. Thomas did it all the more these days because he knew the reward that was on offer for it. There were few things he would not do to see James smile.

“Our love will not fail,” he elaborated, feeling light-hearted and a little light-headed but certain he spoke the truth. “Our spirits will not fail. Our intent and our resolve will not fail. These things simply will not occur.”

“That I can believe,” said James, and there was no hint of him humouring Thomas here, as he sometimes did. He spoke with conviction and warmth, and the remnants of his smile still lingered on his face. “But, speaking of failure, I do not think we will find any trace of the men we seek out here. It has been too long, and our information is too speculative. I don’t know that this enterprise we are part of will take us where we seek to go.”

“In that case, we shall find another venture,” said Thomas, “once we are finished failing here.”

“Let’s do that, then.”

“But it is still a long time until morning,” Thomas said, judging he had waited quite long enough.

James raised his eyebrows a little. “And do you have something in mind to pass the time?”

“Come here,” Thomas said, readying himself to receive James where he sat, “and I will show you.”


	27. A Story is True - Day 377

Thomas did not mind the work they did in Mobile, where they had been welcomed as warmly as any two strangers coming from foreign lands to compete with the locals for work might be welcomed. It rained most days and poured down on many, but even now, in the coldest months, nights were nowhere near as cold as they had been inland. In fact, there seemed to be little difference at all between the climate of Mobile and that of Savannah; after spending the winter on the road and experiencing true cold for the first time in years, Thomas found he welcomed the warmer, muggier air and the frequent rumbling storms around Mobile Bay. 

But he did not like the noise, he did not like the odours and he did not sleep at all well in the crowded conditions they so often found themselves in. He had told himself for a while that this was due to his concerns about James’s wellbeing; when he had woken trembling and half-panicked three nights in a row and on the fourth had not been able to speak until James had taken him down to the beach and sat with him for well over an hour as the sun rose, he had admitted both to James and to himself that it was not so. James quickly saw to it that their next job was not in town but a little way upriver, where they would live in close quarters with other men but not nearly so many in number. They had cleared land, erected and repaired wooden structures and assisted in the transportation of goods along the river, and Thomas had worked longer and harder days than ever before in his life so that when he did have to go in with the men and sleep each night, sleep would take him too quickly and deeply for his mind to be able to whisper to him beforehand.

He could not speak of it to James – there were no words for any of it – and James did not insist that he try. When they were in company, James made himself the spokesman for the two of them so that Thomas would be left undisturbed; when they were alone, he spoke to him of trivialities and small, pleasant memories, putting himself within Thomas’s reach at every possible opportunity and never anything other than warmly receptive when Thomas did reach for him. 

When it came time to return to Mobile, James had promised Thomas that it would not be for long, but the last thing Thomas had expected was that two days after they had returned he would find himself standing next to James on the deck of Jean Dacier’s cutter the _Liberté_ on his way to a small fishing village at the mouth of la Rivière aux Poissons by the name of Granville, where they had spent six weeks working side by side with the fishermen there to move their entire settlement back where it would no longer be threatened by the rising of the river. After that, they had gone to the settlement at Miragouane, and after that to la Rivière au Chien, which had once been a simple waypoint between Massacre Island and Mobile but now, in the hands of Charles Rochon, was becoming something quite different and all too familiar to Thomas.

They had not stayed there long.

After returning early from Charles Rochon’s plantation, they had been three long weeks in Mobile before the _Liberté_ was scheduled for another trip to Granville, this time with two carpenters, three fishermen and one shipwright aboard, along with their families and two métis men, Michel and Jean-Batiste, who had come to assist in negotiating the terms of the expansion of the settlement. Their ship had arrived three days ago and was set to leave again in two, and as that day neared, Thomas found himself more and more reluctant to go with it. He liked it here, among the tall grasses and the towering trees, where the river flowed wide and slow and he could watch pelicans gliding in to land on the river. He liked walking through a place he himself had had a hand in building; he liked the good humour of the fishermen and the practical way they went about their business. 

He liked that he could come out here and sit with James by the edge of the river, ten minutes’ walk from the village, where over time a path had been beaten down through the grass that grew as tall as a man. James and Thomas had only discovered the spot at the very end of their first visit, and returning to it now they had found the area cleared even more where the path came out over the river and four wooden crates set in a circle around a small fire pit.

Thomas sat leaning back against one of the crates, with James doing the same a few yards away. The river was blue and clear, moving so gently it looked almost still, and in spite of all his worries for the future and the ghosts of his past in the back of his mind, Thomas was calm.

“I will miss the hospitality of this place,” James said after a while, squinting his eyes as he looked out over the water even though heavy clouds hung in the sky and there was no light at all reflecting off the water.

“It is restful,” Thomas agreed. “I am glad we were able to come again.”

James looked at him sidelong and then returned his gaze to the river. “I will not miss the widow from up on the hill watching us whenever we are in view.”

“Madame Gascoigne.”

“I know her name,” James said, sounding less than pleased about it.

“I don’t know what she has done to earn your enmity,” Thomas said. “Everyone here watches us for one reason or another.”

When he looked at James, he saw him frowning and pressing his lips firmly together, in that way he had when he was dissatisfied with his own thoughts but could not find a way to rid himself of them.

“You truly dislike her?” Thomas asked curiously. “I did not think you had even met her.”

“No,” James admitted. “I don’t dislike her.”

“Then what bothers you? You do not think she means us ill?”

“The life she leads up in that house on the hill,” James said eventually. “I do not like to think of it.”

For a moment, looking back toward the village despite the heavy foliage that obscured it entirely, Thomas did not follow James’s meaning. Then he turned back and saw how close James was to tears and he understood it perfectly. 

“That is what she faced all those years,” James continued, his control over his voice wavering. “That is what I risked every time I left her. That or worse.”

“Perhaps it would be better if you did not avoid her,” Thomas said gently. “When I have spoken to her she has seemed quite content with her lot. Her daughter has offered to arrange her passage back to Acadia, but she has no interest in leaving. She was just as adamant that she did not want her daughter and son-in-law to come and live with her here.”

“When have you spoken to her of such things?” James said, bemused.

“I have spoken to her on multiple occasions when you have been otherwise occupied,” Thomas told him. “I believe one of us must, as a matter of simple courtesy.”

“I know it is better if I do not avoid her,” James admitted. “I know it does not help me to turn away from these things.”

“Everything in its time,” Thomas said easily. “I have quite enjoyed making her acquaintance without having to make excuses for you.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What do the two of you discuss, then, apart from her family gossip?”

“You cannot speak disparagingly of gossip while asking me to share with you all the details of my private conversations.”

“I can and I have,” James said quite shamelessly.

Thomas thought back to his conversations with the local widow, whose husband had founded the village fifteen years ago but insisted on living separately from the common men who lived there. He had only spoken to her once in passing on this visit, but when they had first come she had sought him out more than once and proved herself quite the conversationalist. 

“She has recounted to me stories of floods and alligator attacks and of every storm she has lived through in this place, giving a great many details as to the damage wrought by each.”

“Thomas,” James said gravely. “I don’t think she likes you.”

“She has shared with me the best vantage points to watch for dolphins,” Thomas continued. “She has told me of the family of crows she has befriended and advised me which of the men in the village are scoundrels and which are not.”

“Scoundrels, eh.”

“She informs me that all but Dominique Dupuis and Jean Gauthier are scoundrels. I am particularly not to trust Gabriel Levesque, apparently.”

“She shares a great deal with you.”

“Indeed.”

“Perhaps she does like you after all.”

“I see no reason why she should not.”

“No reason?” 

“None other than the obvious.”

James nodded wisely. “Your association with me.”

Thomas did not give James the satisfaction of any response to that. “Hers is far from the worst life a person could lead,” he said instead. “I believe she is content with it.”

“Next time we come,” James said slowly, “perhaps we might stay.”

Thomas’s heart leapt; he forced himself not to respond immediately, lest his emotions overtake his rational mind. He stood, and James’s head snapped up sharply to look at him, the surprise in his eyes quickly replaced with warmth when all Thomas did was come and sit down directly beside him.

“Might we?” Thomas said, leaning his shoulder against James’s. “Might we stay?”

James glanced behind them to check if anyone was coming, then quickly scanned the water. When he tilted his head toward Thomas, Thomas was already there waiting for him. They kissed once, twice then three times. “We do not get to do this enough,” James said, running his fingers through Thomas’s hair, which he had not had cut for months. Before Thomas knew it, James had levered himself over to straddle Thomas where he sat, one knee to either side of Thomas’s thighs and poised only inches from grinding against him. He held Thomas’s head firmly in both hands and kissed him again with great intent, stopping only to say, “Not anywhere near enough.”

“You do not need to make such an effort to convince me,” Thomas said, laughing and holding James by the waist. “I agree with you.”

“I am not trying to convince you of anything,” James said, still hovering. “I am simply explaining my reasoning.”

“We could move a little further away from the shore, perhaps,” Thomas suggested. 

“Or perhaps,” James said, shifting an inch or two further forwards, “we could stay _exactly_ where we are.”

“Much as I hate to insist,” said Thomas, thinking of the people who had created the path, transported the crates and dug the fire pit, “I am going to. Come back out of sight of the river, off the path, and I will be more than happy to oblige you.”

“We will be eaten by alligators if we stray from the path.”

“I will take the risk,” Thomas said, speaking as sternly as he could while consumed by the struggle to resist moving his hands lower and touching what he could see. “Get up and come with me.”

“My lord,” James said with a slow nod and a twinkle in his eye, shifting back a little.

“No,” said Thomas, jarred by the reference. “Not your lord.”

“I do not always see him in you,” James said, running one hand down the side of Thomas’s neck. “Let me enjoy it when I do.”

“What is to be enjoyed about it?”

“You,” James said simply. “It is how you were when I first fell in love with you. You were lordly, and I loved you.”

“I was not –”

“I loved you,” James repeated. “Everything that is part of you, I love.”

Thomas looked at James in some consternation. 

“Don’t you dare claim that you don’t love me in spite of myself and all that I am,” said James. “Don’t you dare say that I am not entitled to be the same way with you.”

“Love me as you like,” Thomas said. “Just do not call me lord.”

“All right,” James said after a moment’s consideration. “I won’t. But order me up again.”

“I was inviting you along with me,” said Thomas. “I was not intending –”

James leaned in and kissed him. “Order me up again,” he said. 

“You are –”

“Or we can just stay here,” James said, arranging his weight as though he intended to begin –

Thomas knew full well he was being laughed at and that there was only one way to put an end to it. “Stop,” he said to James, putting one hand in the middle of his chest and pushing him back. “Get up.”

James did not laugh, but his smile was wide and triumphant. He rose to his feet and pulled Thomas up with him then stood back and waited for Thomas to lead the way.

He did. 

* * *

Walking back toward Granville with James, Thomas found it difficult not to think of it as coming home. It was not only that he had no desire to return to Mobile; there was more to it than that. He had played his part in building this place, from the pig farm to the storehouses to the two rows of little fishermen’s huts on the north side of the road. There was no reason, Thomas thought, why he and James could not build another for their own use. Every face here was already familiar, and he knew the vast majority of the names.

“We might stay now,” Thomas said, coming to a halt before they entered the village proper. “Why not stay now?”

“We would not be paid for our work these last few days,” James said. “If we do not collect in person, they will not come looking for us to settle the account.”

“The pay we would receive would only be spent on living expenses between this job and the next,” Thomas argued. “If we did not return, we would not need the money. We would need only a little support here until we were settled, and then we could make our contribution to this place like any other.”

“That is true,” James said. He stood with Thomas and looked speculatively over toward the village. “I think it should be said that there are things about us that might be tolerated in visitors but not looked upon so warmly were we to establish ourselves here permanently. I don’t know if you have considered this.”

Thomas nodded. “In our conversation yesterday,” he said, “Madame Gascoigne asked me _Comment va votre mari très taciturne_?”

James froze. “She said…”

“And then she laughed at me for a full minute when I could not answer her.”

“I cannot tell if you are supporting my argument or attempting to counter it,” James said, his expression growing more alarmed by the second.

“I do not think they will concern themselves with us,” Thomas said. “Michel and Jean-Batiste think nothing of it. When we first met the Matieu girls and they asked us about our wives, I overheard some of what their mother said to them afterwards. Earlier today Gabriel Levesque made a very odd comment about Hephaestus and I am fairly certain that he intended to refer to Hephaestion. It is the only way what he said could make a whit of sense.”

James still said nothing.

“It is something like Savannah, I suppose,” Thomas said to him. “It is a law of no consequence this far removed from the land where such a law was made.”

James did not argue with that. “She really called me _votre mari très taciturne_?” he asked quietly, some sort of wonder accompanying the trepidation in his voice.

“She did.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I am still not quite sure what to think of it.”

“If she is to be our neighbour, you will have a great many opportunities to follow it up with her.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “I should probably introduce you.”

“ _Voici mon mari_?” said James. “In fact, I think that might be best. We will visit her now and see how she reacts to such an introduction before we make any definite decisions as to what we will do. Then you can ask Levesque to clarify his comment about Hephaestus or Hephaestion, and I will speak with Dupuis about the prospect of our remaining behind indefinitely.”

“You wish to go and speak with Madame Gascoigne?”

“I want to see if she will say it to my face.”

Thomas smiled, though James looked quite serious. “I think it very likely that she will.”

“We can very soon find out.”

Thomas thought James and Madame Gascoigne might get on very well, but there was always the possibility that they would clash and clash badly. James was wise, no doubt, to meet her before any definite decisions were made. 

When they walked into the village, Michel and Jean-Batiste were sitting out the front of the carpenter’s shop, Michel smoking his pipe and Jean-Batiste trying to work out how to attach a pelican feather to his hat. 

“Vous-autres avez l’air d’avoir passé un très bon moment,” Michel said, straight-faced. “J’suis envieux.”

James’s response was not polite, but Thomas supposed it was appropriate.

“Dupuis vous cherche,” Jean-Batiste said without looking up from his hat. “J’lui ai dit que vous-autres travailliez.”

“Merci,” Thomas said to Jean-Batiste, who glanced up just long enough to wink and nod at Thomas before resuming his struggle with the feather.

They walked rather more quickly through the village and started up the hill before Dominique Dupuis, who was the closest thing the village had to a genuine authority figure, had a chance to catch sight of them and detain them in conversation. They had not been assigned any particular task for the afternoon, but Dominique tended to assume that everyone he spoke to was as civic-minded and as generous with their time as he was. When it came to James and Thomas he was usually not wrong, but today there was something else far more important to be done.

They were a little more than halfway up the hill when James stopped walking and reached for Thomas’s forearm. He stood still, his head bowed and his grip tight.

“What is it?” Thomas asked, though he was all but certain what the answer would be and his heart had already begun to sink.

James wrestled with himself for a moment before answering. “It is building again.”

Since leaving Kasihta, James had been unwell only twice: once when they were still a week or so away from Fort Toulouse and then once on the boat down to Mobile. Both times, James had been able to warn Thomas of it in advance. Both times, the effects of it had lingered for days. Four months had passed since the most recent occasion, and Thomas had allowed himself to hope that they had seen the last of it. He evidently had not yet learned his lesson about the futility of hope.

“We will go back down,” he said, grasping James’s forearm as James grasped his.

“Why?” James asked, still staring at the ground in front of him. “They have no doctor.”

“To get you settled,” Thomas said, stepping closer. “To make you comfortable.”

“Just walk around the other side of the hill and I will sit and rest,” James said. “There are a couple of hours of daylight yet. It will pass, given time.”

Two hours, Thomas thought, was a very optimistic estimate. Even if the pain did pass by then, two hours was far too long to sit out on an open hill on a cool winter’s afternoon that would too quickly become a chilly winter’s evening. Thomas would not be at all surprised if by then it was not raining. “Once it has passed, you will be in no mood to go anywhere,” he said. “I have not forgotten the state it leaves you in. Best we return before it truly begins.”

James’s shoulders slumped a little. “I do not want them to see.”

Thomas looked down the hill to the village, trying to determine how they might return to their lodging and encounter as few people as possible as they did. There was not far to go; it would not take long, if they started back right away.

“We can walk around the other side of the hill,” James said again. “I do not want them to see.”

When Thomas looked in the direction James indicated, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. “Madame Gascoigne is coming down from her porch,” he told James. “Do you want her to see?”

James looked uphill, blinking heavily and squinting at the figure coming slowly down toward them. “She likes you,” he said.

“Yes,” Thomas said, uncertain as to James’s intent and unwilling to linger much longer where they were. He wanted to hurry James along, to put an arm around him and pull him where he needed to go, but they were out in the open air where anyone could be watching, and James did not want anyone to see.

“She likes you,” James said, “and she called me your husband.”

“Yes,” Thomas said again. If James’s mind was already wandering this badly, they may not have time to walk all the way back before the pain came over him. “She did.”

“She lives alone.”

Thomas frowned up at Madame Gascoigne, who was making good pace down toward them, planting her cane firmly on the ground ahead of her with each step. “You wish to –”

“I do not want them to see.”

“If we are to live here –”

James’s head tilted downward again. “I do not want them to see it today.”

“Est-il malade?” Madame Gascoigne called down, still a good fifty yards away from them. She had a harsh, strong voice that carried very easily down the hill. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

Thomas put his hand on James’s shoulder and stooped a little so he could catch James’s eye. James looked back at him, though he was still blinking spasmodically and seemed unable to keep his eyes fixed at any one point for more than a second. “Are you certain of this?” Thomas asked, keeping his voice low. “I do not know how she lives. I do not know what she might take it upon herself to do.”

James scowled. “What do you mean, _take it upon herself to do_?”

“I do not know,” Thomas said, watching her approach. “I have spoken to her only –”

“Venez, venez,” Madame Gascoigne said, stopping her descent and beckoning them upwards. “Amenez-le à la maison. J’ai du vin. Dépêchez-vous.”

“There you go,” James said to Thomas, grimacing heavily with discomfort but taking first one heavy step uphill and then another. “Wine.”

Madame Gascoigne stood where she was and watched them approach, tapping her cane thoughtfully on the ground. When James and Thomas came within ten yards of her and Thomas opened his mouth to speak, she turned on the spot and began her own ascent, leaning heavily on her cane as she did.

They followed the widow slowly up to her house, Thomas keeping a firm grip on James’s arm and James watching very carefully where he put his feet.


	28. A Story is Untrue - Day 377

Thomas drummed his fingers on the table, listening to the dull thudding and willing time to pass much more quickly than it currently seemed inclined to. He did not like this arrangement, and he never had. They knew too little and trusted too much. They were alone and exposed, and all it would take to bring doom crashing down on them was one mistake, one piece of bad luck, one betrayal. He envied James, who always expected calamity and betrayal and was able to hold every contingency in his mind all at once, never hesitating to adapt not only his plan but also his frame of mind to any misfortune that might befall them. He had a deep-rooted confidence in his sufficiency for every task that Thomas, however hard he tried, could never match.

He was lurking in the front of the cabin now, between the door and the four large barrels in the corner, his sword in its scabbard resting atop the nearest barrel and his pistol tucked into his belt. In the dim light of their one lantern he was little more than a shadow, a dark skulking creature whose presence was at the same time reassuring to Thomas and deeply unnerving. He had never been able to, as James had, fully embrace the safety and symbolism of the dark.

There was a not insignificant chance James would kill a man tonight, and that fact sat on him so very lightly. He seemed neither excited by it nor in dread of it. It simply was, as it had always been for him and so many men like him. There was no romance or ceremony to his sword or to his gun; they were tools for him, a means to an end, just as Thomas had for so many years carried shovel, hoe and sickle as the tools of his trade. Thomas had seen James put those weapons to use with deadly efficiency, and it was not a sight he relished. He was perhaps as much perturbed by the thought of James inflicting violence tonight as he was by the potential for the reverse. He did not know whether there was something lacking in him, to be so unmanned by violence where he bore witness to it, or whether he should consider himself blessed to have had the instinct for it, so deeply embedded in so many others, pass him by.

An owl hooted outside, and James shot a look at Thomas, stepping a little further into the light to give him a slight nod, his hand moving to rest on the handle of his pistol. Thomas quickly counted the papers again. Seven documents for seven souls, one courier into which seven fates would be placed. The value of one human life, Thomas knew, was incalculable. He held seven of them here in his hands in the back woods of the New York colony, and yet he could do nothing to truly guarantee their safety, only do his best to carry out one link in the chain.

There were four brisk knocks at the door. James tilted his head to listen, took up his sword and stepped around to be ready for whoever came through it. He knocked back on the door, three arrhythmic raps whose precise irregularity always made Thomas’s spine tingle.

A woman’s voice said, “February’s blessing,” from outside, and Thomas’s nerves would have eased at that had James not reared back from the door like it had caught fire. Thomas began to tuck the papers away, mentally preparing himself to take up the loaded pistol on his table and be truly willing to pull the trigger, but James waved a pacifying hand at him and moved back toward the door. He stood full in front of it and opened it, leaving his gun in his belt, and Thomas rose to his feet in alarm at this sudden and unprecedented lack of caution.

The figure stopped dead on the threshold, half a head shorter than James and wearing a thick, dark cloak that disguised her form remarkably well. The two of them stood looking at each other for what felt like eternity, silence thick and heavy between them, before James moved aside to allow her entrance into the hut.

She walked in, and James closed the door behind her. 

“I did not believe him when he told me,” she said, her words spoken with a cadence and intonation that had become increasingly familiar to Thomas ever since he had taken his place in the New World. He still could not see her properly, not with James standing between her and the light, her face equally concealed by the great hood she wore and the darkness of the room. He could sense the deep emotion in her voice, but he could not read it. “I never quite believed him.” James made no reply, but this woman seemed not to require one of him. She walked around James and faced Thomas, lowering her hood and fixing him with a calm and unblinking stare, the light from his lantern shining on high, dark cheekbones and steady brown eyes. “Is this him?”

“Thomas,” James said, his voice full of an unspeakable emotion as he came to stand beside her, taking his place there as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Somewhere inside him his emotions roiled; his presentation was composed and calm, with only a hint of wildness showing in his eyes. “This is Madi.”

Thomas walked to stand before her, this woman about whom he had heard so much. She received him with a nod more regal than that of actual royalty Thomas had known, standing firmly and regarding him with a steady gaze from a soft heart-shaped face. “Thomas Hamilton,” he said, feeling his heart twist in hearing that name pass his lips, as it had not in such a very long time.

She shook Thomas’s hand with a polite smile, still openly assessing him. It did not feel at all like she was the smallest in the room. “You have come a long way from Savannah,” she said to him and James both. Then she turned to speak to James directly, her chin tilted up to him. “If that is truly where he sent you.”

“It is,” said James. His eyes flickered once more to Thomas. “But we did not stay long.” 

They exchanged a long look, James and Madi. James looked at her like her very existence was miraculous; her eyes moved over him and took in every detail. When she had last seen James, Thomas realised, would have been not long before his return to Thomas, and a little over a year had passed since then. His hair had grown near long enough to tie back but, not yet having reached that point, was the most unruly Thomas had ever seen it, and his beard grew thick and even. His cheeks were no longer gaunt, his eyes no longer hollow. To many, he may appear an entirely different man; indeed, he had sought actively to appear so. He had found a measure of peace in this life that they now led, hard-fought and hard-won though it was, and this was reflected in his carriage, so different from what it had been.

There was no doubt that Madi had recognised James the instant she had seen him, as he had her, and that spoke volumes to Thomas of how close they had been. 

Thomas went and picked up the papers from the table, walked back toward the door and passed them over to Madi in their leather sheath. She took them and put them in her bag without taking her eyes from James and then turned to Thomas, swift and decisive. “You have your freedom, and you choose to do this,” she said, her tone challenging but far from hostile. “Why is that?”

“ _It is most certain that all men, as they are the sons of Adam, are coheirs and have equal right unto liberty and all other outward comforts of life_ ,” Thomas said to her.

“ _And God hath said he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death_ ,” she returned briskly. “Captain Flint has both stolen men and sold them, and yet he stands here with you today, and you take no issue with him.”

“They did try to put me to death,” James said before Thomas could formulate his response.

“Yes, that is true,” said Madi. “Though from what I hear, it was for unrelated matters.”

James tilted his head from side to side and made a noncommittal sort of noise. Then his mouth tilted into a grin, and Madi smiled, and the last of the tension went out of the air.

“I am so happy that you are alive,” Madi said to James, her eyes sparkling with genuine delight. A young woman she was, truly, despite the responsibilities that had weighed upon her. “I am shocked, and I am happy. I came here to collect papers from Messrs Smith and Barlow, and look what I have found.” She looked at Thomas then, something wistful in her eyes. “Look what you have found.”

“Shall we sit down?” Thomas suggested. 

“I cannot stay for any great amount of time,” Madi said, but she followed Thomas to the table. When she sat in the seat Thomas pulled out for her he had the distinct impression that she was in some way laughing at him and that James too found great amusement in it, and he found that he did not mind in the least. 

James sat facing Madi and Thomas between them, facing the door. For a moment, no one spoke.

“My own good fortune has come at great cost,” James said to Madi, with a guilt that was as painful to Thomas as it was familiar.

“No,” said Madi plainly and without hesitation. “It was not at great cost. Everything was already in motion to dismantle our war before you were given your choice. If you had not agreed to go to Savannah, if you had fought John and died, even if you had managed to kill him and return with the cache, the damage had already been done to our plans and our alliances. Finding you here today, alive, with Thomas, is the only good thing to have ever come of what he did, and it did not cost anyone anything that had not already been ruined.”

Thomas loved her in that moment more than he could say. 

James leaned fractionally forward, seeking out Madi’s eyes with his own. “I am sorry,” he said, “for what he did to you.”

“I am not,” Madi said resolutely. Thomas, though he had known this woman for only minutes, knew it for a lie. Her words to James a moment earlier had been delivered with a steady and unflinching honesty. This response was spoken too quickly and too fiercely for Thomas to believe it was true. “Things will be as they are. I do not wish to speak of it any further. It is a long road I must travel tonight, and I would like to speak with you of other things in this short time that we have.”

“Yes,” said James, leaning back in his seat, his eyes shining with sympathy but saying no more about the matter. “Of course. Do you still hold your base?” 

“Yes,” said Madi. “We still hold it, but I rarely go there. There are families who have found peace there, free families who have made it known that those who will threaten their freedom are not welcome.”

“Even you?”

“My mother is no longer queen there,” Madi said with an old sadness. “She came across with me when I left. She is part of the work that we do here now.”

“She came here?”

“She did.”

James thought on that for a long moment. “Huh.”

“She did not agree to our war to please you or to please me,” Madi said to him with a frown. “She agreed to it because she agreed with it after hearing the cases that we made, and it was snuffed out right in front of her eyes by the one pirate she had come to trust. She was there when it collapsed, as you and I were not. She fought it and she lost.” Madi’s voice, which had been raising gradually as she spoke, caught in her throat, and when she resumed speaking it was calm and even once more. “I had never seen her angry in quite that way before. Once I decided I would leave, she had no desire of her own to stay. Our family’s time now has passed on that island.”

“But here you carry on the work of your father,” said James. “You are a leader in this enterprise, having been part of it no longer than a year.”

“Yes,” she said. “Though it is significantly more difficult without Nassau and its pirates to fund and provision our operations.”

“Yes, I imagine it is,” said James, “and there is precious little we can do about it. Captain Flint is long gone from these shores.”

“Yes,” said Madi. “I speak now to James Barlow and Thomas Smith.”

James suppressed his smile and nodded for Thomas to answer.

“James Smith,” said Thomas. “And Thomas Barlow.”

“I see,” said Madi. “James Smith and Thomas Barlow.” She turned to James. “Smith?”

James shrugged. “It does the job.”

Madi turned to Thomas then, her expression grave. “My condolences for the loss of your wife.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said softly, wondering at the grace of this woman, who had never met Miranda and had spent only these few minutes with Thomas and yet still thought to extend quite heartfelt sympathies to him in this extraordinary moment. Of all the people that James had known as Captain Flint, Madi was the one he had spoken of to Thomas with nothing but respect and warmth, and Thomas was very quickly coming to understand why that was. “Thank you,” he said again, and meant a great deal more by it than he had the first. Madi nodded her quiet understanding, and Thomas would have sworn allegiance to her there and then, had she asked him.

“There is one source of funds still available to you,” said James after a little time had passed, “if you would wish it.”

The silence that followed those words was weighty, and Thomas felt the turning point that this was, the vastly different paths their lives could take depending on what was said next.

“It is a curse,” Madi said roughly. “It has brought no good to anybody.”

“I know,” said James. “I will take the knowledge to my grave if you do not want it.”

“I will consult with my people,” said Madi after a long moment. “I will be able to find you again to give you an answer.”

James said nothing.

“Will I not?”

“If I am ever discovered to be alive,” James said reluctantly, “all hell will break loose, and in every direction.”

“All hell broke loose hundreds of years ago,” Madi said, a fierce light in her eyes. “I will take every advantage I have in the fight against it. Do not hide from me, James McGraw. Do not weaken this undertaking by absenting yourself from it in an effort to protect me from dangers I willingly stand and face. I have had enough of that for a lifetime, and I will not accept it from you. Why are you smiling?”

James’s smile was an affectionate one, underlaid as it was with a deep regret. “It should always have been you,” he said, shaking his head. “I did not see it clearly at the time. I was too caught up with … with –”

“With him,” Madi said.

“With him,” James agreed. “But you are what this place could be, what it should have become.”

“You are sentimental now,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Is this his doing?”

“It is not,” said Thomas. “That is all his own.”

A smile grew on Madi’s face. “I like it,” she said.

Thomas wondered how long it had been since James was last in a room with two people who knew him well, truly liked him and would willingly tell him so. It warmed his heart and eased his spirit. “So do I,” he said. 

“I am very pleased to be of service to you both,” James said, his voice rich and amused.

“I cannot remain here much longer,” Madi said ruefully. “The beginning of my journey was delayed, and I only made up some of that time on the way here.”

“Is it your usual role, to personally effect these transfers?” James asked her.

“It is not,” Madi said. “My courier fell ill and was not up to the journey. The routes we take and the timing of them are known only to very few, and I was the nearest and best suited of us when the last-minute need arose.”

“Then we will likely not meet again by chance.”

“No.”

“If we are to associate, it is best presented as a relationship grown from this meeting, and nothing that came before.”

“Yes, I agree.”

Thomas saw an idea occur to James, saw him suppress a smile and knew that whatever he was about to say was going to be ridiculous. He wondered if Madi had seen that before, if she was as experienced in weathering James’s jokes as Thomas now was. He thought perhaps she would not be.

“You can go back to your people,” said James, “and tell them you were so impressed by the sentimentality of the men you met that you wish to draw them closer into the fold.”

“There is a place for sentimentality in this if it is put to the right use.” Something of the mixed affection and seriousness of Madi’s response reminded Thomas eerily of James when he spoke of such things, of the futility inherent in either pragmatism without emotion or passion without direction. “The survival of sentiment in a hard and unforgiving world is in itself something to fight for.”

James glanced at Thomas. “I know.”

“I really must go,” Madi said.

“Do you think he would be recognised?” Thomas asked. “In New York, Boston, Philadelphia?” 

“Thomas,” James said reproachfully. “We have agreed.”

“It would be well to know for the future. We have never before had anyone whose opinion we could ask.”

“I will not risk it,” James said firmly. “There is plenty that can be done without such a risk of exposure.”

“It would be a grave risk,” said Madi. “They still talk of you. There are some very powerful people with powerfully long memories. All it would take is one person to see something they recognise in you, and word would spread, and things would become very dangerous very quickly. Though you do look different now, it must be said.”

Thomas bore James’s pointed stare as best he could. He had been right to ask the question, and he was perfectly willing to accept the answer he had received. 

“I will make contact with you again, in the usual way,” Madi said. She stood up, and Thomas after her, and James after him. “All such messages come to you directly?”

“No,” said James. “Not necessarily. This is a network in which we participate, but we do not lead it and do not know its magnitude. I am unfortunately not at liberty to divulge particular details to you.”

“Then I will divulge details to you,” Madi said as they walked to the door. “Go to Schenectady in three weeks’ time and seek out a man named Richard van Leuven. Introduce yourselves as Messrs Swift and Broomhill. He will bring you to me.”

James glanced at Thomas to gain his assent, then nodded when he received it. “We will.”

They were standing by the door now, in precisely the same place Madi had stood with James when she had first entered. Her imminent departure looked to be causing James almost physical pain, if the stiffness of his shoulders and the stoic expression on his face were to be the measures of it. Thomas could well understand the sentiment and shared in it himself, though of course he did not feel it to anywhere near the same degree. Madi he could not read anywhere near as easily, especially here where the light of the lantern was weak, but she had said enough during their conversation that Thomas had an idea what she might be feeling.

“I think you should know, if you do not already,” said Madi, looking at James. “There are no slaves on New Providence Island.”

James was still.

“Governor Featherstone insists upon it.”

At the mention of that name, James blinked and looked intently at her, his initial vast surprise finding a more specific target. “Governor Featherstone,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

“Governor _Featherstone_ ,” he repeated, articulating the name slowly and precisely.

“Yes.”

He stood a moment longer, silent and suspicious. “Governor _Augustus_ Featherstone.”

Madi glanced at Thomas, but he had no explanation to offer her. “Yes,” she said again.

James stared at Madi, his mouth open in helpless disbelief, and then laughter suddenly hit him so hard he sagged against the wall, buried his face in one hand and surrendered himself to it. Madi looked at Thomas again, as bewildered and as uncertain as Thomas had yet seen her.

“Oh God,” James managed to say, wiping tears from his eyes. 

Thomas moved to stand directly in front of him, helpless in front of this outpouring of mirth. “James,” he said. “What is it?”

James cleared his throat twice in an effort to curb his laughter. He pounded on his chest and blinked tears from his eyes. “Oh God,” he said again.

“Who is Augustus Featherstone?”

James looked at Thomas and grinned. “Augustus Featherstone,” he said, his voice shaking with repressed laughter, “was the quartermaster of the _Colonial Dawn_ , Jack Rackham’s right-hand man and a conspirator with the pirate resistance in Nassau.” He shook his head, and two more disbelieving chuckles escaped him. “Governor Featherstone. God.”

“A pirate,” said Thomas, wondering for a moment if there was a joke being played on him by James, or on the both of them by Madi. After all that had happened, a pirate sat in the seat of power on New Providence Island?

“A pirate with a pardon, governor in Nassau,” said James with a grin that gleamed even in the darkness. “How the world turns.”

“And no slaves are permitted on the island,” said Thomas, remembering what Madi’s initial disclosure had been. He looked closely at her, hardly daring to believe it. “Truly?”

“Indentured servants work the plantations,” she said. “Indentured servants, ex-pirates, freed slaves and Maroons. So I am told, and so I believe.” 

Such a thing seemed too good to be true, but Madi spoke with confidence and James, though he was still recovering from the shock of hearing the words _Governor Featherstone_ , gave no indication that he disbelieved her.

“So Jack Rackham holds power in Nassau?” Thomas asked Madi. Nothing he had heard of Rackham, either from James or the wider world, hinted at any uncommon antipathy toward slavery or tendency toward economic reform, but Thomas knew better than to judge a man by the stories that were told about him.

“Rackham does not have the will to make or enforce such an edict,” James said dismissively. “It will be Max.”

“Yes,” said Madi. “I believe it is.”

“Governor’s wife, then?”

“I do not believe so.”

“No?”

“He has a wife, and she is not Max.”

“Hm,” said James, as though he were surprised by but not particularly interested in this turn of events. Then he looked at Thomas again. “So Nassau has become a city on a hill after all.” There was such a simple happiness to the statement that Thomas could not help but reach for him.

James held Thomas’s hand, gave him a long, lingering look then turned back to Madi. “It is much less than I promised your mother,” he said. “It was not even I who achieved it, in the end.”

“It is far more than she would have considered possible before you came.”

James smiled, affectionate and proud. “But not you.”

Madi did not smile back, instead lifting her chin and meeting his gaze with a firm confidence. “No. Not me.”

The smile on James’s face dimmed then, and a shadow came over him. “The things he took from us,” he said. “The things he has destroyed.”

“It will come,” said Madi with quiet determination. “And when it does, they will say it was inevitable.”

James let out his breath in a laughing, disbelieving gust, and Madi took pity on him and stepped forward into his arms. He let go of Thomas and held her tight, and she held him back. He kissed her hair, and she put her hands on his chest, and Thomas saw proof before his very eyes that Captain Flint had been loved by some, and truly missed once he was gone. Not by many, perhaps, but some. 

“I must go,” said Madi, and James let her go. She took a few steps toward the door, checking over her papers and hood and boots. James came around behind her and held his hand out for Thomas, who took it back into his own and stepped up beside him. Madi looked between the two of them, her expression level but with great warmth in her eyes. “I would very much like to speak with you, Thomas Hamilton, when circumstances permit it,” she said. “I hope to see you again very soon.”

“In three weeks’ time,” Thomas promised.

“Safe journey,” said James.

With no further ceremony, Madi raised her hood over her head and left, closing the door behind her.

James stared for a moment at the door then let out a long, slow breath. “Well,” he said. “What do you think of that, Mr Broomhill?”

“No,” said Thomas as they turned to face each other. “No, no, no. I will not be Broomhill.”

“There’s an elegance to it,” James said with a light in his eyes, toying with a smile and Thomas’s heart right along with it. “Don’t you think?”

“There is an elegance to _her_ ,” Thomas said, now that he was free to openly marvel at it.

“Isn’t there,” James said, the affection open in his voice. 

“And she likes you.”

James nodded. “A rare quality indeed.”

“I will be Broomhill,” Thomas conceded, running a finger up and down the inside of James’s wrist. “But only because I like you so very much.”

“Territorial,” James noted with a smile.

Thomas tried to smile back, as the jest was familiar, but he faltered, and for a moment he did not know why.

James stepped in closer to him. “Thomas, there is not – Madi and I, we did not –”

“No, no,” Thomas said before James had to say anything more. “I know. I am not –”

He sighed heavily. “You are thinking of Silver.”

Thomas began to gather their things, for just as Madi was on a schedule, so too were they, and it would soon be time for them to leave. “I know you have spoken of him to me, as you have spoken to me of others, and I to you,” he said as he worked. “I have known what I think of him for some time now, but when standing in a room with two who were close to him, who loved him and who were betrayed by him, he takes on a different form. He is more real to me now that I have met Madi and witnessed your shared pain and have glimpsed the pain that is hers alone. I am not accustomed to feeling what I feel about him so strongly, but there is no cause to be concerned.”

“I have felt strongly about him for years,” said James. “You get used to it.” 

Thomas paused and looked across at James, who was leaning on the door, his pistol and his sword both now hanging from his belt. “Do you?”

James nodded. “The trick of it is to make sure there are other things you feel far more strongly.” 

Thomas checked over the cabin one more time before returning to pick up the lantern from the table and his coat from the back of the chair. “I do not think we will have much trouble doing that,” he said.

“No,” said James. He pushed forward off the door and opened it for Thomas to walk through, taking the lantern from Thomas to allow him to put on his coat, though the night was not a particularly cold one. “I don’t think we will.”


	29. A Story is True - Day 610

Thomas lay alone in bed listening to the gentle rain, which was all that remained of the ferocious storm that had woken him some time early that morning with an enormous peal of thunder and a gust of wind that Thomas could have sworn rocked the house. James was already gone by that point, and Thomas had known better than to wonder where he was. For a few sleepy moments, he had considered going out to try to convince him to come back inside, but James was not easy to convince of anything at the best of times, and the bed had been warm and dry and comfortable, and Thomas had drifted back to sleep in a matter of minutes in spite of the constant growling thunder and the beating rain. This was the severest of the storms that had swept over them since their arrival in Granville, but it was by no means the first.

Now, having woken again, Thomas lay and listened to the rain, and he thought of the great storm James had sailed his ship into in defiance of Captain Hornigold and his despised pardons and all that it had led to. He thought about what John Silver had said about James physically manifesting his state of mind onto the world and wondered if James partially believed it still, if he walked out to immerse himself in the very wildest of the weather because he felt it was in some way already a part of him, a reflection of his darkest thoughts and old remembered pain. But there had been storms along this coast long before James had come there, and there would be storms long after he had gone, and Thomas hoped that it would not be too long before James grew weary of the ordeal. He hoped that whatever inner turmoil James sought to unravel would fade away in time and Thomas could have someone beside him to hold as the storms raged.

The front door opened and closed, and Thomas heard James’s damp steps crossing the floor to the corner where their bed lay. He came around the side of the screen in sodden shirt and trousers, making only a perfunctory attempt to towel his hair dry. When he saw Thomas awake he walked directly to the bed, by all appearances intending to join him in it immediately.

“Absolutely not,” Thomas said, propping himself up on his elbows to survey all the places James was dripping from and to cast a disapproving look at the feeble efforts he was making with his hair.

James stopped where he was and blinked at Thomas for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Give me a pillow.”

“Absolutely not.”

James took a moment to hear and understand Thomas’s answer, gave him a bleary look and proceeded to lie down directly on the floor where he was, balling up his wet towel and tucking it behind his head where he lay.

“That is not at all what I meant,” Thomas said, torn between frustration and laughter. James clasped his hands together on his chest, crossed his legs at the ankle and closed his eyes, his expression serene. Thomas knew he would be very soon asleep, and though the climate was a warm one and they were in the very peak of summer, sleeping wet on the floor was quite a different matter than sleeping dry in one’s bed. “It is little wonder that Madame Gascoigne thinks you a barbarian,” Thomas said, pushing the bedclothes aside and climbing a little creakily to his feet. 

“It is barbaric to withhold the comfort of one’s bed from one’s grand amour who has just come in from a wild and woolly storm,” James retorted softly without opening his eyes. “In the face of such wanton cruelty, one must make do.”

“It was only last week you told me in no uncertain terms never to call you that again.”

“I’ve since come around to it,” James said, motionless.

“And when was this?”

“About twenty-five minutes ago.”

“Twenty-five minutes ago.”

“That’s right.”

“Might I ask what brought that on?”

“You might well ask.”

Thomas nudged James with his foot in the hope it might spur him to some form of movement.

“And now you are kicking me.”

James did not like to ask for affection or soft treatment. He preferred to goad Thomas into it so he could frame it as a triumph once it was given to him. Thomas did not at all mind playing along; there was something astoundingly gratifying about the moment of capitulation it created, where James gave up his pretence and Thomas stopped feigning unwillingness – or his unwillingness evaporated – and the intimacy between them was as simple and profound as intimacy ever could be. So he hauled James to his feet now, and James rose with him obligingly, bringing the towel with him as he did. Thomas set about ridding James of his wet clothes and then began to dry his hair as best he could. James put one hand on Thomas’s chest, tilted his head forward and closed his eyes as he was tended to.

“One day I am going to ask you to stop doing this,” Thomas murmured, passing the towel carefully over the spot on James’s head that was still tender a year and a half after it had been struck. “That day grows ever sooner.” 

When James made no response, Thomas briskly dried his shoulders and his chest, where his hair had been dripping, and then pulled him over to the bed and pushed him down into it. James lay there exactly as he had been lying on the floor, and Thomas sat beside him watching his damp chest rise and fall with every breath he took. James’s eyes fluttered closed; Thomas covered him carefully with the light blanket they slept with in the summer.

“I am drawn into it, you know,” James said.

“I know you are,” Thomas told him. “I only wish that you were not.”

“So do I.” James rolled over onto his side to face Thomas, his eyes slowly opening again.

Thomas patted him on the shoulder and rose to his feet. “You know we will need to spend the day putting the house and garden to rights after this storm,” he said. “I will be waking you a little later this morning to do your part.”

“Fine,” James said, and promptly rolled away and onto his other side.

“I will be in the garden after breakfast, if you should need me,” Thomas said, quite unbothered by what was by now a familiar display of surliness. “Sleep well.”

* * *

Thomas had cleared the garden of debris and dug three trenches for drainage when James appeared on the back porch, barefoot and tousle-headed and very slightly in advance of the time Thomas had intended to go in and fetch him. Madame Gascoigne had been sitting in her rocking chair all morning doing her embroidery and watching Thomas work, and now she had a brief discussion with James that appeared to be about either James’s bare feet or the state of the floor or both. When she waved him away, James came down the stairs to join Thomas where he stood in contemplation of the two apricot tree saplings that had snapped and now hung sadly strung between their two stakes.

“Too tight,” James judged. “We may need to loosen the others before the next big storm. I am informed that last night was by no means as wild as things can get here.”

“Did you eat?”

“No, I took the food you left for me and I threw it out the window. It is very important to me that I remain hungry all through the day.”

“Forgive me for wondering whether your own welfare had returned to its rightful place at the forefront of your mind,” Thomas said, considerably relieved that James seemed to be more or less back to his usual self. “You have come down here unshod and barely dressed.”

James looked down at his untucked shirt, his trousers and his bare feet. “I was not aware this was to be a formal event.”

“Madame Gascoigne will be very upset if you track all that mud back into her home.”

“Then I won’t track it into her home. I’ll sit out here and wait until it rains again, and I will be washed clean.”

It was a good thing, Thomas reminded himself, that James was back to his usual maddening self. “There are some damaged limbs in our tree cover to the west,” he said. “We will need to use the ladder to remove them.”

“It is easier to wash feet than it is to clean boots,” James said in a somewhat conciliatory fashion. “Shall I fetch the ladder from inside?”

“In a moment.”

“All right,” James said, and waited.

“Jean Thibault came by,” Thomas told him. “He asked me whether you intended to take him up on his invitation to go out fishing with the fleet.”

“Ah,” said James.

“I told him you had not come to a decision.”

“Mmm.”

“I did not share with him that this was the first I had heard of it at all.”

James looked very thoughtfully at the unfortunate young apricot tree in front of him. “They call us l’Anglais de la mer and l’Anglais de la terre, you know,” he said. “I don’t think you have ever told them of my background, and I certainly have not. I have never claimed any interest in going fishing with them or with anybody, and nor have I claimed any ability in it. I wonder if this is not a scheme to lure me out onto the water and do away with me.”

“Qui se ressemble s’assemble,” Thomas said. “They like you.”

“Based on nothing.”

“Based on what they have observed of you over the year that we have lived here and the time we came here to work before that,” Thomas said. “That is not nothing.”

“I have given them no reason to like me.”

“You do not need to,” Thomas said. “You are used to having to win people over. You are used to barriers being put up to prevent any intimacy between you and all those you interact with. Now that there aren’t any, you erect one of your own.”

“Yes,” said James, as though that had been so obvious as to be not worth saying.

“They do not hold it against you that you are an Englishman, nor that you live with and love a man. They are good men who offer you a hand of simple friendship. It would be better if you did not enforce your own solitude in this way.”

James frowned. “One would think you were trying to be rid of me.”

“I would prefer you had friends among the locals instead of holding yourself so separate from them.”

“I have been putting up with people all my life,” James said. “Now, at long last, I barely have to, and you try to send me out into their grasp once again. I will not give them any reason to turn against me, against us, and to ruin what we have here.”

Thomas paused to consider his words. “This situation is not the same as others you have known,” he said. “There can be casual acquaintance here. You can spend time in the company of your neighbours without any of the pressure or the conflict you are accustomed to. As I have just said to you, they have demonstrated goodwill toward you already simply by virtue of the invitation. If you take it up, they may indeed come to like you.”

“You are too trusting,” said James.

“You are too suspicious,” Thomas countered easily. “But if you must view this situation in such a way, consider this. Would it not be more damaging to your reputation here if you were to refuse that hand of friendship? Is that not what is likely to turn them against you?”

James spoke his next words with great reluctance. “I am not sure that it is safe,” he said. “I thought you would prefer that I did not go out all day on the water.”

Thomas stepped closer and laid his hand along James’s tense jaw, rubbing his cheek with his thumb. James relaxed a little under his touch, but only a little. “I do not think there is any great danger to you in going out fishing,” Thomas said. “You will not be alone there, and if anything should happen I am sure they would look after you. It is no secret that you have suffered too many head wounds in your life and that it brings you discomfort. They invite you knowing this.”

“Discomfort,” James said wryly. “Is that what you call it?”

Thomas thought of the nauseating and draining headaches James was still assailed with on occasion, his dark turns and his sudden fatigue. Indeed, he would like to keep James within arm’s distance of him at all times, the better to enjoy his company and see to his health. But the worst of the attacks happened rarely, for all that they were highly distressing, and Thomas rather thought more harm would be done by James becoming too cautious and too pessimistic than by his suffering an episode out on the water without Thomas there to immediately see to him. That at least would be an event that could be recovered from; Thomas knew something about the pernicious nature of gradual declines.

“I would like us to stay here and be happy,” Thomas said. “I can see us growing old in this house, as Madame Gascoigne has done before us.”

“Until she dies and we are put out by her infernal daughter,” James said.

“Let me finish,” Thomas said. “Madame Gascoigne relies on us in her advancing age, as well as those in the village she has relied on for some time. When that time comes for us, we will need people we can rely on. I think we would be wise to begin to secure their goodwill as soon as can be, so that real trusting relationships can be formed long before that need becomes acute.”

James waited a moment to make sure that Thomas had finished. “Unless by that time she is dead, as is quite likely, and we have been put out by her infernal daughter.”

“She has indicated to me once or twice that she is considering leaving this house to us on her passing,” Thomas said.

James gave Thomas a rather mild glare. “And you rebuke me for not immediately sharing with you everything that is said to me.”

“I did not rebuke you.”

“Your tone was castigatory.”

“It was nothing of the kind.”

“Did Madame Gascoigne give you any indication why she was considering leaving her house to two Englishmen she has known for barely a year and not to her own legal heir?” 

“I did ask her that,” Thomas replied. “She said she did not think we would be motivated to properly attend to the garden if we did not think we would see the long-term benefits of it.”

James smiled then. “She has a lot to learn about you.”

“And you, apparently.”

“Me? How?”

“You have done an astonishing amount of work on this house,” Thomas said. “And I have certainly not been alone out here in the garden every day.”

James seemed displeased by that observation, but he had no argument with which to counter it.

“I think there is more to it, in any event,” Thomas said. “I think she truly does want us to have the house.”

“Perhaps she took so much enjoyment from the stir about town when we began living here that she has decided to do it again, bigger and better than before,” James said. “Perhaps she does it out of spite toward her husband to take his house out of his family line.” 

“To spite her husband?” Thomas said. “Why would she wish that?”

James thought for a moment, and when he spoke his tone was cautious. “Do you know how long ago it was that Monsieur Gascoigne died?”

“I surmised it had been some years.”

“He died November before last.”

“All right,” said Thomas. “What is the significance of that?”

James went and sat down on the edge of one of the raised beds they had prepared for next month’s planting. Thomas went after him, wary of James’s suddenly solemn demeanour.

“Miranda and I kept your portrait in our house at Nassau,” James said once they were seated. “We kept it tucked away, but we kept it. We kept that painting when anyone with even a whiff of sense would say it ought to have been destroyed in order to ensure our true identities were never discovered.”

Since taking up residence in Madame Gascoigne’s home, James had begun to speak more and more of the life he had lived with Miranda. He had done so reluctantly at first, wary of his own reactions as much as anything Thomas might do or say, but by now he could do so with relative equanimity and without that discussion necessarily coming to dominate the day. Thomas likewise was becoming reconciled to the guilt and regret that such a topic always awoke in him; he accepted it now as something he would always live with and devoted all of his remaining energy into remembering her as fondly and as honestly as she deserved. He did his best to treat himself with the same kindness and forgiveness that he would always extend to James.

“My portrait,” he said now, to invite James to continue. “Which?”

“Of you and Miranda,” James said. “You in red and her in gold. It is not much of a likeness of you, thank God. I don’t think I could have borne it if it were.”

“Miranda always liked that one,” Thomas said. “She gave it pride of place, and if she was cross with me she would threaten to replace me with the handsome man from my portrait. He was much less argumentative, she said, and far more pleasing to the eye.”

James looked Thomas up and down out of the corner of his eye, half a smile on his face. He said nothing, but Thomas took his meaning perfectly well and was flattered by it. 

“There are no pictures of Monsieur Gascoigne in the house,” Thomas said. “That is the point you are making?”

“Not only that,” said James. “You had never been to Nassau, let alone been in that house, but Miranda and I were compelled to have you there all the same. Even after ten years had passed, we could not let you go. Monsieur Gascoigne died not two years ago, and have you ever seen a sign in this house that any man lived there before our arrival? The housekeeping was appalling and neglectful, but every trace of him had been quite thoroughly removed. If our host was not referred to throughout town as _la veuve Gascoigne_ , would you even have known she had been married?”

All Thomas had ever heard from Madame Gascoigne about her late husband was that he had been a fool who only ever wanted to grow peanuts and smoke tobacco. She had always spoken of him to Thomas as though he had long been gone from her life. 

“She is glad to be free of him,” James said with certainty. “More than glad.”

“If she had been ill-treated by her husband, I wonder that she so freely welcomed the two of us into her home.”

“She likes you,” said James. “She also likes to court scandal, which I believe is her right as a widow. I see no reason for wonder at all.”

“You really find that a sufficient explanation?”

“Affection for you and enjoyment of your company would not strike me as an insufficient explanation for anything.”

Thomas smiled. “Her position is rather different from yours in this regard.”

“After all this time, you still do not realise what you are,” James said, shaking his head at Thomas. “It is quite astonishing.”

“What I am?” Thomas said in mild alarm. “What do you say I am?”

James turned where he sat to face Thomas, his gaze direct and unflinching. “You are the perfect neighbour,” he said. “You are respectful, you are attentive and you are generous. You are reliable. Your manners are, if anything, too good. You are at pains not to intrude on the lives of others, but you take an interest in them all the same. If I were a sixty-five-year-old widow, I would invite you to live with me in a heartbeat. I would beg you to. I would be so intent on doing so, in fact, that I would even tolerate sharing a home with the barbarian who makes himself inseparable from you.”

“You would, would you?” Thomas asked, feeling bizarrely teary and needing to distract himself from it.

“Most definitely.”

“Even though he drips water all over the floor in the early hours of the morning and tramples barefoot through the garden?”

James shrugged. “At least he can cook.”

“Very true,” Thomas said. “Barbarian as you are, Madame Gascoigne informs me you might well be the best maid she has ever had.”

“She what?” James said, his voice cracking along with his composure. “She informs you what?”

“She compares you favourably to Brigitte, who she had twenty-five years ago in Port Royal and she says ruined her for any other maid. She might not mourn her own husband, but she still mourns the day that Brigitte married and was taken away by hers.”

“I have changed my mind about this garden,” James said snappishly. “I think we should be rid of the beans and the peas and the squash. We should forget planting turnips and potatoes and parsnips. We should be sowing nothing but peanuts as far as the eye can see, and I am taking up smoking tobacco as soon as I can get some.”

“You are overreacting.”

“I am not.”

“It is a compliment.”

“Is it?”

Thomas looked up at Madame Gascoigne, who was watching the two of them with no small interest, as she so often did. “She is impressed with you,” he said to James. “She has welcomed you into her home as much as she has me.”

“She is impressed with me because I can cook and I can clean,” James said. “I shudder to imagine the incompetence of the maids she has had since the magnificent Brigitte if my efforts in this regard put me above them all.”

“I think a large part of it is also because you show little interest in talking to her. She approves of that very much.”

“She never talks to me of her own volition for longer than thirty seconds,” James said. “It is only fair that I return the favour.”

“She says it is because you do not speak French.”

“I have only ever spoken to her in French,” James said, his voice rising in baffled frustration. “I wished her a good morning when I passed her on the way down here, and she told me I had wasted most of it laying about and she hoped I was planning to make it up to you. She told me if I needed new shoes, she would give me the money for them. I said I did not need any new shoes, and she then made some disparaging remarks that I am certain she would never repeat in your presence. I can assure you she knows full well that I speak French.”

Thomas tried to hold back his smile, but he could not do it. “You speak French like someone who taught himself the language by reading the Lancelot-Grail dozens of times over as a child, who was later exposed to and devoured an enormous quantity of the finest French literature without ever speaking a word of it aloud and then went out into the world and associated exclusively with sailors, merchants and pirates in the colonies in a veritable mélange of dialect.”

“That is a singularly specific observation,” James said, sounding rather less than appreciative of it.

Thomas leaned in and kissed him. That at least he might appreciate.

“My French is not that bad,” James muttered as they parted, his ire only partially diminished.

“Did I say it was bad?”

“You said _a veritable mélange of dialect_.”

“There is nothing pejorative in that. In fact, I am sure it is why you have been invited into the fishing fleet and I have not. It is why you are l’Anglais de la mer where I have been dubbed l’Anglais de la terre. It is my French in a place like this, not yours, that borders on inappropriate, whatever ill-fated efforts I might make at adopting the vernacular.”

“And yet by Madame Gascoigne’s reckoning, mine does not qualify as French at all.”

“Well,” Thomas said. “Opinions can differ. I prefer your quite extraordinary French to that of any other I have heard. I wish you would speak it with me and not only with our host and our neighbours.”

James raised his eyebrows as high as they could go. “And you count yourself a rational man.”

“There is nothing more rational,” Thomas opined, “than recognising and embracing the immense and transformative power of love.”

James laughed then – not loudly, but his chest shook with it. “If that is what you wish to call it, I will not stop you.”

“I would like to see you try.”

When James’s laughter came to an end his smile remained, warm and genuine and intended for Thomas and Thomas alone. 

“Your hair is a frightful mess,” Thomas told him. “We do have a comb. We have multiple combs. We have a brush.”

“I also had Amadis de Gaule in Padstow,” James said placidly. “Books one and two. Your analysis was quite incomplete.”

“Ah,” said Thomas. “My mistake.”

“My grandfather would be delighted if I was to see out my years among Catholic fishermen,” James said, his eyes glazing over as he returned to distant memory. “Perhaps it is true that our very earliest years form our indissoluble character.”

“I certainly hope not,” said Thomas. “I was atrocious.”

James’s face lit up in what Thomas could only term boyish delight; he really had no right to be as beautiful as he was even in the state he was in, nor to shine so brightly in Thomas’s eyes. “I would very much like to have seen that,” he said.

“When my brother Archie was born, I spent the first six months of his life insisting it was I who was to be the earl after my father and that my little brother could bring me my coat and hat if he wished to,” Thomas told him. “When he was a little older, I insisted that he request my permission to come into the same room as me or to play with any of my toys, or even to directly address me. Up until that point, I am informed, I had been the saintliest of children, but the devil came out in me as soon as I had a rival for the affections of the household. My governess was quite at a loss how to handle the transformation.”

“None of this is in the least surprising,” James said with unrepentant honesty.

“I imagine things might have been different had I been raised by my Irish Catholic grandfather in a fishing town in Cornwall.”

“I imagine they might have been.”

In truth, Thomas could not imagine it at all.

James let out a lazy huff of breath and crossed his feet at the ankle. “Tell me something else of what a horrible child you were,” he said. “I enjoyed that.”

“If you will agree to go out tomorrow morning with the men, then I will.”

“You haggle worse than any fisherman. Whatever has become of noblesse oblige?”

“I have dispensed with it,” Thomas said. “Now I am l’Anglais de la terre, doomed never to be invited to go out with the fleet.”

James thought a moment then shook his head. “There is nothing of sufficient value in your offer,” he said. “I will simply imagine the very worst of you at my leisure, without reference to the truth, and I will continue to sleep late in the mornings as much as I might wish to.”

“Will you indeed?”

James uncrossed his legs and planted his feet firmly on the ground in front of him. They sank fully two inches into the mud. “If you pledge to wake me early each morning for no other reason than to spite me for not agreeing to go on a fishing trip with a pack of Frenchmen I barely know, you will very soon come to regret it.”

“You do sleep very late.”

“You do not need to always be up so early,” James said. “I have broken out of my conditioning; you could always join me in it.”

“It is not a matter of conditioning,” Thomas said. “I could not sleep for twelve hours of every day even if I wanted to.”

A frown had flickered over James’s face at Thomas’s quantification, but it left just as quickly. “I don’t think you realise how early they go out,” he said. “Even you do not rise so early, and I am sure you would not appreciate my doing so.”

“Do not be so –”

“And if I went out with them on a regular basis, as you seem to be suggesting I do, I would stink of fish day and night. I have gone to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid that fate up to this point. It’s bad enough we are always eating it.”

Thomas quickly closed his mouth to avoid gaping like a fish. That aspect of the situation he had not considered at all, and it gave him serious pause.

James claimed his victory by Thomas’s silence. “I will fetch the ladder,” he said, rising to his feet. 

“There is one more thing,” Thomas said, “in the spirit of sharing with each other the things we have heard. I have had word that another shipment of slaves came into Massacre Island last Friday.”

James nodded. “This from your contact in Mobile.”

“Yes.”

“I have heard whispers that a fleet is being raised, as the Spanish are on the march to retake Pensacola.”

“I see.”

They both took a moment to reflect. James sighed and spoke into the silence. “Would you like to solve either or both of those problems today, or shall we settle for removing these branches you have mentioned to me?”

Thomas would have quite liked to declare his intention to eradicate the slave trade by nightfall, or to bring about a lasting peace between all colonial powers and native peoples in the Americas. Neither was a problem with any apparent solution; those with the power to change things for the better had no intention of doing so, and those who would do so did not have the means. 

James, though his question had been sardonic, was waiting quite patiently for Thomas’s response to it. 

“Bring the ladder to the western boundary,” Thomas said. “I will fetch the saw.”


	30. A Story is Untrue - Day 610

It was a beautiful, sunny July day, and James and Thomas sat on a rocky ledge overlooking a mountain pass, waiting for a messenger to arrive. At times like this the beauty of creation nearly overwhelmed Thomas as he looked out across the rich green land, the sun illuminating everything it touched, the air fresh and clear, the man he loved sitting beside him on the warm rocks. On the climb up they had seen a family of bluejays hunting insects, and James had gone to walk past them but Thomas had had him stop so they could watch a moment. While they stood still and silent, a young fox had crept out of the underbrush and stood and stared at them for a few moments before retreating back into cover. Only when the jays flew through the trees and away had they resumed their climb.

Once they had reached their vantage point and settled in to wait, James had spoken. “You asked me back in Savannah if I had moments in which I was at peace or moments that brought me joy,” he said. “You told me of Josiah Willoughby and sharing the meteor shower.”

Thomas, warmed by the sun and lulled by the still air, made no response. It had been an opening remark, not an interrogatory.

“I did not,” said James. “I had no such moments. I do not think I am made for them. I do not appreciate the birds, or the foxes, or the showers of stars. Not like you do.”

This Thomas already knew, and it did not much concern him. “It is not the birds or the foxes themselves,” he said. “It is a shared moment of existence, an awareness of one’s place in the physical universe.”

“Yeah,” James said wryly. “That’s what I mean.”

“You have told me how it feels to sail, to face the elements undaunted and to outwit and withstand them.”

James’s face wrinkled; he inclined his head once and looked to the horizon. He had confessed to Thomas only recently that he missed sailing and missed the ocean, missed the sea air and the wild weather and its perpetual rolling motion. He was a man taken away from his calling, who had mastered his craft and then been sundered from it. “There were moments of relief,” he said, now surveying the mouth of the valley. “There was affection and friendship and intimacy. There was victory and triumph. I still do not think there was joy, not as you describe it.”

“Will you tell me of one of those moments?”

“Of triumph?”

Thomas had heard about victory: locating the _Urca de Lima_ , the capture of the Spanish warship, winning Madi’s mother over to the war, routing the English on that same island. He had heard about affection: Miranda, Gates, Madi – and Silver, in his way. “Of relief,” he said. “A moment of relief.”

James looked out across the countryside as though searching for a memory among its trees and hills. “Not now,” he said. “You know how these stories always go. She will be here soon enough, and we will need our wits about us.”

“All right,” said Thomas. “But I will not forget.”

“I do not for a moment think that you would,” said James. “You have not forgotten any single undertaking I have made, implied or express, through the entire course of our acquaintance.”

“No,” said Thomas, amused by the faint petulance in James’s tone. “I have not.”

“Do I have any others still outstanding?”

“Yes.”

James raised his eyebrows as he looked across at Thomas. “I do? Which?”

“In London, you said you would teach me how to knit.”

“I really don’t think I said that,” James said with moderate certainty after a moment’s reflection.

“You most certainly did,” said Thomas. “I remember it well. Miranda was expressing the sentiment that the higher-born the lady, the more impractical the skills she must learn as a girl. She said that she could only decorate, where others could create, and she asked me if I would prefer a wife who could embroider or one who could mend. I said I was perfectly happy with the wife I had chosen, and she said _No doubt James can sew, and knit, and do all those sailorish things_ , and you did not contradict her. She said you should teach me to knit, so I would be able to do at least one thing that was properly useful, and you laughed and said you would, when you had a spare month or two to do it.”

This recitation complete, Thomas awaited James’s response.

“I now regret my question,” he said eventually.

“And that is not the end of it,” Thomas told him. “I am happy to share more examples with you, as we are at leisure.”

“I ask that you do not,” said James. 

“Very well. Though it does make it rather more difficult for you to fulfil your promises, does it not, if you have forgotten all about them?”

“I can live with breaking the odd promise.”

Thomas knew this to be true, but he also knew that it would not be long before James was placing knitting needles and yarn in his hands.

“Don’t get too excited,” James said. “I barely remember how it is done. I was not fourteen when I gave it up.”

There was a flash of movement down on the path, and Katsi came running to the bottom of the climb. She waved her hand up to get their attention, and Thomas raised his hand in return. She beamed at him and gave him a little, more personal wave. Even at her young age – Thomas thought she could not yet be above fifteen – she was a great runner. She was not out of breath in the least from the two miles she had run ahead and was bursting with characteristic energy. She rested her hand on top of her head then raised it, repeated the gesture, lowered her hand level with her waist, paused, and then cradled her arms together as though holding a baby. Then she feigned walking as though exhausted, limping a little, and clapped twice.

Thomas clapped back twice at her, and she smiled up at him again. 

“There were to be three adults,” James said.

“Yes,” Thomas said as he waved goodbye to Katsi, who set off running past them toward home, her job done for the moment. They would see her later, all things going well, but she was under clear instruction to spend as little time as possible in contact with them. They were not supposed to know her name, nor she theirs, but she had defiantly introduced herself the first time they encountered her alone, and Thomas had felt obliged to reciprocate. Katsi was a nickname, or a shortened name at least, and Thomas was a common enough name among settlers that he did not judge there was much danger in it.

“I still think it is better to have a messenger with whom we can communicate in common language,” James said. “It would be useful to know what has befallen them before they come into our custody.”

“That is not the agreement we have with the Mohawk,” said Thomas. 

“It is not our agreement,” said James. “That is the problem.”

“It is Richard’s agreement, and they are his people. This is how they wish to conduct matters.”

James sighed. Madi he could obey in reasonably good spirits, and did. Richard van Leuven, whose connections and resources made this New York operation possible, was an irritation to James in more ways than one. He had earned the trust of Madi and her mother, which rankled James to an extraordinary degree. He was sincere and generous and Thomas liked him, which rankled James even further. Worst of all, there was no trace of ego or volatility in him, and he defused every effort James made at confrontation or competition with effortless grace. Thomas assisted in this, of course, and James then would fume about it for days.

He brooded about it now for a good twenty minutes, Thomas trying his hardest not to laugh at him, until the time came that two women and two children came into view walking slowly along the trail in their direction. One of the women was tall and broad-shouldered, the other smaller and hollow-cheeked. Both wore jackets, long skirts and sturdy boots, but neither wore anything to cover their heads, whether by choice or by necessity. The taller woman’s hair grew a few inches out from her head, thick and wiry; the smaller woman’s was no longer than James’s had been when he had come to Thomas in Savannah. They were both dark-skinned, extremely so, and Thomas marvelled that they could walk as calmly as they did, knowing that if they were seen by anybody other than those sent to protect them, it would be their doom. He and James had an easy time of it when they had made their way north. James had worn a hat, sold his rings and taken out his earring. Over time, he had grown out his hair. It was very rare, now, for anybody to so much as look at him twice.

It was the smaller of the women who held the infant in her arms, swaddled in heavy cloth, its head resting against her shoulder. The taller woman held the hand of the other child, perhaps seven or eight years old, who looked very much like he wanted to cry but was determined he would not. His shirt was torn around the neck, and Thomas could tell from the way he walked that his shoes did not fit him at all well.

James and Thomas gathered their things together and descended the slope. James lingered two-thirds of the way down, gun in hand and eyes watchful, while Thomas went all the way down to meet them. The taller woman was the first to see him, still a hundred yards away, and she put a hand out in front of her fellow traveller to halt her steps. 

“ _I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest_ ,” Thomas said, pitching his voice to carry across the distance.

The woman lowered her arm at his words. “There were to be two,” she called back.

“My partner is nearby,” Thomas said. “He keeps watch in case of danger.”

They moved forward together slowly until they stood before Thomas, exhaustion evident in the faces of the little boy and the smaller of the women. The woman who had spoken to him had strength in her yet.

“My name is Thomas,” he told them. “It is not far now until you can rest.”

“That is my son’s name,” said the thin woman. She nodded toward the boy, who was staring up at Thomas in surprise. 

Thomas held a full waterskin out to them. The larger woman took it from him and passed it to her companion. “There is the sign you were looking for,” she said, squeezing young Thomas’s hand encouragingly as the other woman took cautious, controlled sips from the skin. Where the smaller woman’s voice had been thin and hoarse, hers was rich and deep as a man’s. “This man is also called Thomas. You have the same name.”

The boy just stared up at Thomas, thinking hard and saying nothing. Then he tugged on the woman’s hand, and she leaned down so he could whisper in her ear. “It is all right,” she said to him. “I promise you it is all right. I am here, and your mama is here. See?”

“We should be off,” said James, coming onto the path. “Unless there is anything that must urgently be dealt with, it is best we are on our way.”

“This is James,” said Thomas as the taller of the women held the waterskin to the boy’s lips and carefully controlled the water he took in. “We will show you the way.”

“Is it very much further?” asked the mother, the rasp of her voice soothed only a little by the water she had had.

“Two hours,” said Thomas. She winced. “We will assist you in any way we can.”

“There is nothing to assist with,” the tall woman said, finally taking her own drink and then passing the skin back to Thomas. He took it from her and gave her a packet of salted meat and nuts in exchange. She passed that, too, to her companion. “If we must walk for two more hours, we will walk for two more hours.”

The boy began to breathe raggedly, screwing up his face in a desperate attempt not to cry. “I don’t want to walk for two more hours,” he said in short gasps, his voice high and distressed. “I want to stop.”

The two women exchanged a look over his head.

“I need to take your brother for a while. Your mama is very tired and can’t carry him forever.”

“You said you would carry me!”

“I know, Tommy. I know. But your mama is very tired, and your brother is too little to walk. I will have to take him.”

“ _I’m_ tired!”

“We will assist you in any way we can,” Thomas repeated. “Anything that needs to be carried, I can carry.”

Both women turned their eyes slowly toward him, and he saw the doubt and the fear in both. Their guides until now, Thomas knew, had been Indian, likely Mohawk or Oneida. It was a great deal to ask a family of escaped slaves to place their trust in two white men to guide them, let alone to touch them or anything precious to them.

“I understand your concerns,” he said, letting his intentions and goodwill show as plainly on his face as he could. “I do not insist upon anything. I offer and offer only. If I were to carry your child, or anything else of value to you, I would give you my gun in exchange. I would walk directly in front of you, or beside you, as you ask. I would give him back immediately upon request. At any time you might wish this, you may ask for it. I know how far you have come.”

James hated this offer of Thomas’s and was deeply resentful whenever it was taken up, but Thomas was determined to make it each and every time. They were here to help, after all, and whatever he could do to have that help accepted, to ease their way and ease their nerves, was well worth doing. James thought it folly to give a weapon to someone who may not be in enough control of themselves to use it or may not know how to use it at all. Such a thing did not concern Thomas; he did not intend to give them the least reason to even consider using it, so there were unlikely to be any accidents, and James was more than capable enough as a lone hand if danger were to strike. 

“No, thank you,” the mother said, shaking her head and gripping her baby tight to her breast, the food Thomas had given them still held in one hand.

“Ad –”

“No, thank you,” she said again, cutting off her companion briskly and definitively. “We have brought him this far, and we will bring him the rest of the way.”

“Of course,” said Thomas. “I understand. Let’s be off, then.”

Everyone began to move forward except for young Tommy, who stood firm where he was, shaking his head and leaning back from the hand tugging him onward. He was overwrought and overwhelmed, and Thomas did not have very much experience with small children, but he could see where this was going and did not know what could be done to prevent it.

James abruptly held out his sword and pistol. Thomas took them instinctively, watching with no small surprise as James then went to kneel down a few yards in front of Tommy. He looked him in the eye, waited for a heartbeat, and then asked, “Are you afraid of me?”

Tommy stared at James as though entranced, his grip on the woman’s hand fierce and tight. She glared down at James and opened her mouth.

“Are you afraid of me?” James asked again, not releasing Tommy from his gaze. The little boy nodded, a frown growing on his face. “Are you angry with me?”

Tommy nodded vigorously. He was a small thundercloud now, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flaring.

“Hit me,” James said with a firm nod. “Hit me as hard as you like.”

Before the woman holding his hand could say anything more than a shocked and disapproving “mister”, Tommy had ripped his hand out of hers and run at James, shoving his chest with both hands and then pummelling him with clenched fists, blow after blow after blow from his collarbone to his midriff. James withstood it with clenched jaw and a calm expression, acknowledging each blow with a grunt, a groan or a puff of air through his nose. The two women looked on, the taller in horror and the shorter with a sort of weary acceptance, her eyes flickering from her son to Thomas as she waited for it to come to an end.

It was not long before Tommy ran out of energy and he was pushing James rather than striking him, tears running freely down his face. Then he stood there and stared into James’s eyes, panting heavily. James looked back at him, impassive and knowing, and there was an understanding between them, the boy and the man, that defied everything that had gone before. 

Nobody spoke for a long moment. 

“That will be all his energy,” his mother said ruefully. “He has spent the last of it.”

James ignored her, all his attention still centred on the boy. “Can you walk for another two hours?” he asked.

Each breath Tommy took was a colossal effort; Thomas would be surprised if he could take two more steps. “I’m tired,” he whispered.

Now James glanced over Tommy’s head to his mother, and there was an understanding between them as well, which the taller woman clearly did not share in. That woman looked at Thomas, suspicious and uneasy. “I can carry you, if you would like,” James offered Tommy, having seen no opposition in his mother’s face. “I can carry you a little of the way.”

Tommy nodded and walked forward into James’s arms, wrapping his legs around James’s waist and his arms around his neck, clinging tightly to him as he rose slowly to his feet. Tommy’s mother passed her baby to her companion, took out a strip of meat and began to nibble on it. The taller woman accepted the baby, her perturbation not easing as she watched James and Tommy with an intense protectiveness that Thomas could feel from where he stood several feet away from either of them.

Thomas was left with two guns and two swords and did not know quite what to do with them now the time came to guide this family through this leg of their journey. He felt the weight of responsibility in being the only one armed, knowing that James would not approve of his own weapons being in anyone’s hands but Thomas’s and so it would all fall to him if any danger arose. It was a mark of confidence in him that James would turn his weapons over and burden himself with a child. He trusted that Thomas would protect them all. Thomas left his own gun and sword in his belt and carried James’s in his hands, the sword in his right hand and the pistol in his left. At least by the eleventh time they had done this, the path was effortlessly familiar and he did not have to think about where he was going or the terrain they would have to pass through on their way. All he had to do was be alert to danger and be prepared to act quickly if anything unexpected were to occur.

He led the way, setting a pace much slower than he would travel on his own or with James but which he knew would still be arduous for these women, who had been on foot for three days, secreted in a goods carriage for two and then put onto this path to walk for two more. He could not fault his young namesake for being at the end of his tether, and he felt nothing but admiration for the two women in all that they had done and the circumstances in which they had done it. 

The first time he glanced back to check on those following him, James was speaking quietly to Tommy, their heads resting against each other but facing in opposite directions, so Thomas could not tell if Tommy was participating in the conversation. The two women followed behind them, Tommy’s mother first and then the other following with the baby tucked securely in her arms, both partaking of the rations Thomas had supplied them. By the fifth time Thomas turned to look, Tommy was limp in James’s arms and James was instead speaking to his mother, who was stumbling a little as she walked but pressing resolutely onward, fixing her eyes on the figure of the woman she followed who was carrying her other child. She spoke briefly but not curtly. Once, when James turned and waited for them to catch up to him, she stumbled over something on the ground and reached out to James, gripping his sleeve tightly to regain her balance. His own footing never wavered, and nor did his hold of her sleeping child. He waited for her assurance that she was well and then proceeded, saying no more about it.

James always did better with the women and children than Thomas did. He had a way of deferring to them, of making himself small and quiet and intimately bound to them, that Thomas could only marvel at. When there were men or older boys, he was competent and impersonal, leaving it to Thomas to both befriend and reassure. When there were none, he appeared a different man altogether. This was a side of James that Thomas so rarely saw and did not feel himself a part of, and it made his heart ache in odd and hungry ways. 

They did not stop for all of the two hours. James carried Tommy, who to Thomas’s knowledge never once woke. The two women took it in turns to hold the baby, who was quiet as a mouse for the whole journey.

Katsi was waiting for them a short distance outside the village, kicking her feet back and forward where she sat perched on the signal rock, a tall square slab of stone that was near impossible to climb but could be reached from above by the surefooted and the adventurous, of which Katsi was definitely both. She gave them a sharp salute and then climbed to her feet and scrambled up the steep hillside, dancing from rock to tree to rock again, never once at risk of falling.

“We go in here now,” said Thomas, indicating a turn around the hill with a hollow in it where they could shelter and await the formal delegation from the village. “Someone will come and meet us soon, but for now we stay out of sight.”

Once they had reached it, cool and damp out of the sun’s rays, the children’s mother collapsed against a wall, sliding down it slowly and landing with a thud. The other woman sat down next to her, passing the baby back into her arms and putting an arm around her shoulder. She tilted her head sideways so the two rested together, exhausted but unbroken, and the smaller women closed her eyes and immediately slumped in sleep. James knelt and lowered Tommy into the larger woman’s lap, working to extricate the back of his shirt from the boy’s sleepy grip before returning to his feet, stretching out his chest and arms and looking down on him one more time before turning back toward Thomas.

“Thank you,” the woman said to him in a low rumble, wrapping her arm around Tommy as he nestled against her.

James nodded, turning back and crouching down again so he could speak directly to her where she sat. “It is why we are here,” he said. “To assist you.”

She looked at James squarely, trying to read something in him, and he made no move to resist or avoid her scrutiny. As he had done with Tommy, he simply offered himself to her as an object for her frustration, her suspicion or whatever other thing she might be feeling.

“What makes you do a thing like this?”

James glanced at Thomas, who had taken up a position where he could see both them and the path. Thomas was abashed, suddenly, for watching, though James seemed not to think anything of it. “A great many things,” James said as Thomas looked away. “Too many to explain in an hour, or a day, or a week.”

“Is your name really James?”

“It is.”

“They called me Edith,” she said. “They will be looking for an Edith. My name is Yawa.”

“They will never find either one,” James affirmed quietly. 

There was a long silence then. Thomas looked at the angle of the afternoon sun on green grass and foliage. He wondered how many would come looking for these four escapees and how hard they might be determined to look.

“I need to go and stretch,” James said. “Your son is heavy.”

“My son?” Yawa said.

Thomas felt the intrusion of his ears as the only other person awake within earshot of the conversation. He concentrated on monitoring the environment. He did not look at them. 

“He is if you choose to make him so,” said James. “To all appearances, you already have.”

“His father was left behind,” Yawa said softly. “It is not another mother that he needs.”

“My grandfather was a mother to me,” James said, even softer. Thomas listened closely, spellbound. “His was the only love I knew as a boy, and it was gone from me far too soon. If anyone else, before or after he died, had offered me love such as you show that boy, I would have accepted it with open arms. I was starving for it for a long time.”

“You are not truly English,” said Yawa. “The English do not speak in this way.”

“No,” said James. “Not usually.”

“Does he?”

Thomas tried not to react to the eyes that he knew would now be looking in his direction.

“Yes,” said James, though Thomas did not think it was quite true. There were different kinds of openness and different kinds of intimacy. He and James did not share in the same way, nor share the same things, nor share them for the same reasons. The closer they had grown to each other, the plainer the differences between them became and the less it mattered that they were not entirely the same. He could not say this though, could not interrupt their conversation to share his own observations, not when he was pretending so diligently not to be taking any notice of it at all.

“Do the Mohawk?”

“I have not spent a great deal of time with many of them,” said James. “I could not say.”

“You do not live among them?”

There was a reluctant silence. “It is best that not too much information is shared,” James said. “The fewer who know details, the safer we all are.”

“You are in danger, then, from this.”

“This is far from the worst danger I have known,” said James. “But there is no sense in being reckless. You will be here for a short time, anywhere from two days to a week. You will be given a choice as to what path you ultimately wish to take.”

“A choice,” Yawa said under her breath.

“We will never know where you go, and you will never know where we have come from. That way neither can endanger the other.”

“I see.”

James rose to his feet once again, and Thomas finally allowed himself to turn his head and look. Yawa had one arm around Tommy and one around his mother, both of whom were fast asleep. 

“It will not be long before they are here,” Thomas said, and Yawa tilted her head to look at him, looking exhausted now as she had not until this precise moment. She trusted James now, he thought, and by extension Thomas, and so allowed herself finally to acknowledge her weary state.

James came over and took his weapons back from Thomas, standing a little way further into the hollow than he, inspecting his gun and then tucking it back into his belt. He knew it pained Thomas to meet these people and then never see them again; he was giving Thomas a chance to go over and speak to Yawa, as this was the last chance he would get to do it. 

Thomas looked over to her, and she had been looking at them but quickly dropped her eyes – not out of fear, Thomas thought, but a similar decorum to that which he had himself tried to exhibit. There was not much sense in Thomas beginning a conversation now when it would so quickly come to its end, when she had spoken so intimately with James and now very clearly needed rest above all. So he stood quietly with James at the mouth of the hollow, shaded from the sun, and waited for the delegation to arrive to take this newly-free family into their new life. James was calm and at ease, and so Thomas did not speak to him, preferring to let him linger in that state for as long as they were alone and he could remain so. 

The delegation came and went: the grim young man Thomas knew only as Bear, the wrinkled healer Terés and, because there were children involved, Katsi herself, whose smiles and brimming energy endeared her to adults and children alike. She shared bread with Tommy and held his hand as the group left, but he looked back at James as she chattered away to him in a language he did not understand. Thomas watched them go, letting himself for a moment think of the many futures they might have, the men that Tommy and his brother could grow into free of chains and with only the ties of family to bind them, whatever form that family might take. His part in their escape had been so very small, and yet his heart followed them until they were out of his sight and for a little while longer than that, until James took him by the hand and led him back up the hill toward their ledge.

The next task was to backtrack along the path they had taken and camp in the area for a few days lest pursuit occur, but first there was a period of waiting and watching in case anything arose in the village that would require their assistance. So for the moment they sat quietly together up on the hill, sharing that twin feeling of completion and loss that a successful relocation always engendered. It was not the easiest time to pass.

“Your moment of relief,” Thomas said to James after a little while.

He thought James might refuse again, as they still needed to be on guard and be ready for anything that might arise needing their urgent and complete attention. “Eleanor Guthrie,” he said instead, sadness etched into every line of his face. 

It was not a name Thomas heard often from James’s lips, and when he did it was always accompanied by a deep and abiding melancholy and a long-brewed combination of frustration, admiration and pity. From what Thomas had learned of her, he would never have thought her name would arise in such context as this.

“I have told you of my confrontation with Miranda after she sent the letter to Addington Thomas,” James continued. “I have told you the things we said to each other at that time.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. _If he were here, he’d agree with me_ , Miranda had said to James, and James had run from her. 

“I had told both Eleanor and Hal that I would address the situation with Miranda and report back,” James said. “I did not do so. Eleanor found me in my cups, drinking alone deep into the night. She gave me a talking-to for getting drunk at such a critical point in our quest. She scolded me for risking irreparable damage to my reputation if the men were to see me in such a state at such a time. I am not sure what I said to her, exactly, what doubts or fears or misgivings I expressed. I cannot recall it clearly. But she saw something, I think, of what tormented me.” He turned toward Thomas but his mind was somewhere else – somewhere distant, quiet and wondrous. “She told me she believed in me.”

Those words hung in the air, delicate and haunted by what Thomas knew had become of Eleanor Guthrie and her relationship with James. 

“It does not sound like much,” James said, returning to the present and seeing the look on Thomas’s face. “I suppose to understand a moment, one must understand the man as he was in that moment.”

Thomas smiled at the words that were now so customary in their recounting of their lives to one another.

“Eleanor and I,” said James, “we performed. We had in common our shared dream for Nassau and precious little else. We were allies by circumstance, and we each held onto our power by the skin of our teeth, risking it and winning it time and time again. The reputation of each lent credibility to the other, and so we were finely balanced, always, between true alliance and potentially devastating conflict. She needed Nassau, and so did I. Miranda did not need Nassau, and indeed attempted to remove me from it. Nassau was conflict and Miranda always my harbour away from it, and when conflict found its way into that harbour, I saw the dichotomy I had built for myself and could not see a way to bring it into a unified whole. I could feel myself splitting down the middle, and so I drank.”

“And Miss Guthrie found you,” Thomas prompted him when he fell into silence.

He saw the relief physically come across James at the thought of it, saw his shoulders relax and his expression become smoother. “Eleanor stood before me without fear or favour and told me my duty,” he said. “She reminded me that there was a whole world outside the war in my own head. She put her faith in me, though I had just returned from supposedly confronting Mrs Barlow for her unforgivable betrayal and I had gone straight to drink and doubt and depression. I was in desperate need of reassurance, and she gave it to me, and then the next day she said nothing of it. She never said anything of it at all. She never used it as a weapon against me, for all that we went through afterward. That is why it lingers more strongly and more persistently than any other moment of the kind. She was neither a gentle woman nor a generous one, and yet for me, that night, though she could not possibly have known what plagued me, she was.”

“She put you back upon the path.”

“There have been those who have sought to remove me from the path I travelled,” said James. “There are those who have been equally resolved to keep me upon it. Only this time, this one time, did I feel true kindness in it.”

Thomas could recite all the names of those who had sought to turn James from his chosen path. The list started with his own father and Admiral Hennessey, included Miranda, Mr Gates, Captain Hornigold, Governor Rogers and ended with John Silver, and yet here James sat with Thomas, resisting them all still. He had never spoken to Thomas of the trauma particular to his first exile, not explicitly, but Thomas heard the reverberations of it loud and clear when James spoke of Miranda’s letter, Gates’s mutiny and Silver’s ultimatum, all of which had come from persons he had held so very close to his heart. He reached out and took James’s hand, felt the coarseness of it and the gentle strength. They sat quietly on this path they had chosen together, and Thomas thought of all the people James had known so well and Thomas not at all, who had struggled and suffered and ultimately fallen, without whom this moment could never have come to pass. 

_The time you have left is short,_ the emperor had written. _Live it as if you were on a mountain._ Thomas would mention that to James when they settled in for the night. James, literal-minded as he could be, would laugh, and Thomas would laugh along with him. The two of them were insignificant, perhaps, in the grander scheme of things, as all men ultimately were, but that was all the more reason to take each moment as it came and make as much of it as could possibly be made.

“You are the very rarest of men,” James said to him, looking out across the valley bathed in afternoon light. “And I am the luckiest.”

“My dear,” said Thomas. “The feeling is mutual.”


	31. A Story is True - Day 987

It was not uncommon these days for James and Thomas to walk down toward the landing with Christine Matieu and her children to watch the fishermen come back in with their haul. Her twin daughters Charlotte and Madeleine were brash eight-year-old aspiring sailors; her three-year-old son Guillaume was small, timid and clung to his mother’s skirt at all times. Madame Matieu herself was also a nervous sort, and the battles recently fought between France and Spain not forty miles away from her home had been far from helpful in this regard. She worried dreadfully about the mishaps that may befall her husband when he was out on the water, but she did not like to come down so far from the village alone. So James and Thomas went with her, James supervising the daughters while Thomas stayed close to and reassured the mother and son.

Charlotte and Madeleine shouted at every dolphin they saw and competed fiercely to be the first to see their father’s boat enter the bay. Every now and then James would call out a command: to come to attention, to drop to the ground, to take cover, to race each other back to him, to report to him the prevailing wind or any perceived threats in the area. Occasionally, if a dispute arose, he would preside over a duel between them, in which first rocks were thrown at twenty paces and then, if neither hit, long sticks were produced and the victor was decided by personal combat. The girls called him Monsieur le Capitaine and listened to him over their own mother when the game was afoot. When it was not, they called him Monsieur James and very rarely listened to him at all.

The girls were so busily collecting seashells (“pièces de huit”) that it was Guillaume who first spotted the boats coming in, clapping his hands with glee and then tugging at his mother’s hand to hurry her along to the landing point. James spotted them a moment later and promptly belayed his latest order in favour of calling for an immediate and urgent retreat. Charlotte and Madeleine hurtled past him and skidded to a halt in front of Thomas and their mother; Madeleine was the faster runner, but Charlotte had started closer, and they arrived at the exact same moment. They argued over who had won all the way down to the landing; James and Thomas fell in behind the family. 

Today it was not only local fishermen who disembarked from their boats; two men in Marine Nationale uniforms came off with them, looking decidedly the worse for wear. One was older, perhaps forty, and looked glum and bedraggled; the other was nearly fifteen years younger, lively and charming despite the apparent hardship he had been through. Charlotte and Madeleine had begun to run to greet their father, but upon seeing these men they stopped in their tracks, exchanged a confused look and went cautiously back to their mother. 

Much as Thomas was curious to find out who these men were, it was always best to be careful when it came to strangers in this place. The locals here had accepted the two of them without reservation; Navy men might not be so quick to do so. So as the Matieus went down to welcome the men back, Thomas followed James a little way up from the water, taking shelter from the sun under a tall stand of trees. The way gossip went around the village, Thomas would know all about it soon enough.

“They will be survivors from the _Amarante_ ,” James said, nodding to Charles Caron as he ran up past them and into town, no doubt to bring news of their arrival to Dominique. For a man who often had to be cajoled out of his home and who quite regularly threatened to become a complete recluse, James was always very well informed of everything that went on in the bay and around the coast. Thomas knew of the _Amarante_ , and he knew that there were those among the French who did not fully trust the peace that had been reached between France and Spain. He had not been aware, however, of the _Amarante_ having come to any grief.

“I was under the impression that hostilities between France and Spain had ceased.”

“You know it is not only –”

“And I have not heard any reports of piracy in this area in all the time we have been here.”

James still watched the two strangers. “There is always a first time.”

“You do not suspect there is anything amiss with these two, do you?”

“No,” James said, but he did not take his eyes off them.

“I imagine they will not stay long,” said Thomas. “They will need to report to their superiors as soon as may be.”

“Mm,” said James. 

After a little while the fishermen waved the Navy men away, and the Matieu girls brought them up to introduce them to Monsieur James le Capitaine and Monsieur Thomas le Professeur – _nos voisins anglais,_ as they declared them to be _._ Thomas took note of the surprised look that the older of the men gave James and then the second look, puzzled – then the third look, sly. Monsieur Thierry Condé, Charlotte had named him. Thomas was quite sure that James had noted his reaction and noted it well.

The younger of them, a Joseph Fortin, had been initially surprised at being introduced to Englishmen but did not spend much time in contemplation of it. Once the introductions were complete and all six of them stood together under the trees, he began telling Charlotte and Madeleine a story of a great serpent he had encountered in the high seas, his face bright and his voice animated despite the exhausted droop of his shoulders. He was a fine storyteller, but while the tale captivated the girls and similarly entertained Thomas, his companion’s eyes kept returning to James.

Fortin had chased the serpent into a great coastal swamp full of alligators when Condé stood up a little straighter and invited James to walk with him a moment. James gave Thomas only a brief glance before going with him; an uneasy feeling rose in Thomas’s chest. When Fortin roared to startle the girls, Thomas startled along with them. As Fortin recounted his single-handed slaying of not one but three alligators, Thomas watched James and Condé talk quietly some fifteen yards away, the strain in their conversation plain to anyone who might be watching.

Thomas tried not to watch them too closely. Fortin was now stalking the sea serpent, and the girls were listening with wide eyes and open mouths. Madeleine leaned into Thomas’s leg and he put a hand on her shoulder, telling himself not to let Fortin’s sensational narrative hold sway over his own sense and better judgement. James would not have walked away with Condé if there was any real danger in it.

James cried out then, and Thomas turned to see him bent over and holding his left side, his fingers dripping red. Condé had his knife out, and his arm was drawn back ready to strike again. 

Time stood still and Thomas could not move. Only Fortin was immune to it, starting toward them immediately. By the time he had taken his first step, James and Condé were on the ground grappling; by the time he reached them, Condé was lifeless on the ground and James lay beside him, still holding one bloody hand to his side. 

As Fortin stood over them in open-mouthed shock, Thomas hurried forward. He knelt by James and put a hand over the top of his, pressing firmly down as his mind tried to catch up with all that had happened. James looked past Thomas. “Allez à votre mère,” he said firmly. “La gardez d’ici.” Thomas turned his head to see Charlotte and Madeleine standing only a little behind him, white-faced and still. When they did not move, James frowned and summoned the captain back into his voice. “Allez-y.”

They shuffled past, hand in hand, and then ran down to the landing, yelling frantically that the village was under attack. Thomas looked at the angle of Condé’s neck and then back at James, who looked back at him, his face taut and otherwise expressionless. Thomas would not risk saying anything; he kept a firm pressure on the wound and let James take the lead in what was to come next.

Fortin stared for a long moment at the bloody knife on the ground between Condé and James, and then he stared similarly at James’s and Thomas’s hand over the wound it had inflicted. He looked down to the landing and the men running quickly up to them with weapons in hand. “Sainte Marie, mère de Dieu,” he said to Condé’s lifeless form. “Qu’est-ce que tu as foutu?”

* * *

“It is nothing,” James said as soon as Adrien was gone and Thomas had closed the front door behind him. When Thomas turned back into the room, James was no longer hunched over; the pained grimace was gone from his face. “Do not concern yourself.”

Thomas took a deep breath in and then let it slowly out. “Nothing?” he said, looking at the dried blood around his fingernails.

“Barely a scratch,” James said. “You know it is all scar tissue down there anyway.”

It was all too easy for fear to become anger, and it became easier still when James was so nonchalant in the face of it, but Thomas was not angry with James. He would not allow himself to be angry when he did not know the truth of what had occurred. He knew what he had seen with his own eyes, but he could not properly react to it until he had understood. James could make all the tasteless comments he liked; Thomas would not be distracted by them. 

When he spoke, he spoke calmly. “Perhaps you will explain to me what has just happened.”

“Of course,” James said obligingly. “I might take some wine.”

“Stop,” Thomas said when James began to walk over to where they kept the bottles. James stopped. “It is not nothing. Do not say it is nothing. Go and sit down, and I will fetch the wine.”

When he came back with drinks in hand, James was sitting leaning back comfortably in the best of their chairs, a sturdy armchair with tattered blue upholstery. 

“Who was he?”

James waved a dismissive hand. “Thierry something or other. Capuchon. Camberchet.”

“You heard as well as I did that his name was Condé,” Thomas said, passing James a glass and sitting across from him. Once seated, he took a steadying drink. “That was not what I was asking.”

James took a sip and let the taste sit in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. “He was on Crapeau’s crew,” he said. “Gunner, I think. I only sailed with him for a few months.”

“How many years ago was this?” 

James shrugged and gave no sign at all that the movement pained him. The wound was a shallow one, Thomas knew, but it had been long enough around his side to bleed heavily and had not been easy to properly dress and bandage. If James continued to be so blasé about it, it was very likely the whole thing would need to be redone. “Thirteen,” James said.

“And he recognised you even now?”

“I must look now rather like I did then,” James mused. “Captain Flint did not always appear as you saw him in Savannah.” He smiled a little into his glass. “I imagine I was rather memorable.”

James had taken to tying his hair back again, though it was still nowhere near as long as it had been when Thomas had first known him. He kept his beard short and meticulously neat. It was not difficult to imagine that a man who looked as James did, who had been both at his physical peak and near the height of his power, would have been memorable indeed.

“But you also remember him,” Thomas said once he had shaken most of that image from his mind.

“The face, not the name,” James said, looking at Thomas with rather a knowing quirk to his mouth. “Even then, I did not properly recognise him until he approached me. I remember him because he got in a fight with one of my men, would have been killed if Joji had been a different sort of man. He was stupid and angry then, and the years, it seems, did not do him any favours in that regard.”

“No.” Thomas drank some more wine. The impulse to anger had faded from him; now there was nothing to face but his fear. “I keep thinking perhaps I have finally seen you hurt for the last time,” he said. “Every time, I think perhaps after this there will not be any more. Then it happens again.”

“If he had not drawn blood, there would have been far more questions about my killing him.”

Thomas was tempted to down the rest of his wine in one swallow. He leaned forward instead and set it down on the table. “I know that.”

“One thing from all this is very pleasing,” James said in a pointedly light tone. “It appears that the cache is going to go down in history as Captain Flint’s hidden treasure. Rackham will be furious.”

All of the pieces finally came together in Thomas’s mind. “Of course,” he said. “He was after the gold.”

“He certainly was. He threatened to expose me if I did not reveal its location to him there and then, and he did not take it well when I pointed out to him several flaws in his plan.”

“If he were to expose you as a pirate, he would equally be exposing himself.”

“Certainly,” James said, but he was looking too pleased with himself for that to be the end of it. He looked so self-satisfied, in fact, that Thomas knew the rest would be divulged without his having to ask, so he picked up his glass again and swirled it as he waited. “He said that he had heard the fishermen call me friend,” James went on. “He said that it was obvious the local women trusted me with their children. He suggested that if they were to learn of my true identity, they would feel themselves deeply betrayed and their reaction would be – what did he say – _energique_. So I asked him whether he had considered that my true identity might be what made me so immensely valuable to them. I told him where we live and who we have lived with there, and I reminded him by what name Charlotte and Madeleine had introduced me to him. When he did not immediately make any response, I then asked if Monsieur Fortin had any notion that his comrade in arms had once been a pirate.”

“And so he made his move against you.”

“In plain view of any number of witnesses,” James agreed. “Some men simply do not change as the years advance.”

“You appear to have resolved it all very neatly,” he said.

James raised his glass to Thomas and drank the whole thing down.

Thomas was not inclined to do the same. He understood it all now, but the fear had not left him. “It has been a long time since I have worried about the shadow that Captain Flint has cast over our lives,” he said. “I had not thought it would follow us all the way here.”

“It is a spark,” James said. “Yes, there is the potential for great danger if it catches and spreads, but if spotted and dealt with immediately, it can be extinguished without the least damage being done.”

* * *

Thomas sat dozing in a chair he had dragged into the shadows near the front door, his pistol in his lap and his sword leaning against the wall in easy reach. The house was quiet and still, but the chair was not comfortable and so there was no danger he would sink into any deeper sleep. His own nerves would not let him sink into any deeper sleep. All things considered, he was doing very well to doze.

The porch often creaked at night, as did most of the house. In the beginning, when he and James had slept out in the main room, Thomas had often been woken by it. By now, he rarely noticed it even when awake. But after Madame Gascoigne had died, James had taken down the original stairs and replaced them with a set that creaked very reliably when it was climbed, and so there was no mistaking the distinctive sound of a footstep on the stair when it came.

Thomas cocked the pistol as those footsteps came to the front door; he sat quietly as the door swung slowly open and a shadow of a man came in with his hood low over his face and a naked sword in his hand that reflected the moonlight. The man held the door open behind him as he stood still and took in the room, looking from the far left corner where James and Thomas’s bed had once sat behind a screen, over the motley collection of furnishings they had inherited, built or traded for, to the door on the far wall and then the two open doorways to his right, one on either side of the great fireplace. He did not turn and look back the way he had come, where Thomas sat silent and in shadow. 

He closed the door carefully behind him, and the room was dark once more. His footsteps were soft and sure as he headed to the right toward the open doorway, walking past Thomas without seeing him at all. Once he had passed through the doorway and gone into what had once been Madame Gascoigne’s sitting room and now served as Thomas’s study, Thomas stood, quietly picked up his sword and walked after him. He stopped just before the doorway, barely breathing, and waited to hear the artful creak in the door to their bedchamber, which had once been hers.

The door creaked open; after a moment of absolute silence, there was a surprised shout and a clash of swords. Thomas hurried to the lantern on his desk and uncovered it, turning away so the light would not dazzle him. 

James and Joseph Fortin were struggling in the doorway between the study and the bedchamber, their swords crossed in front of their faces, each exerting as much force as they could against the other. James’s eyes were all but closed; Fortin, having been taken by surprise, had his wide open. When light from the lantern flooded the room he flinched instinctively away from it then turned his head and saw Thomas. His face contorted with fury and he opened his mouth to speak, but James slammed a knee straight upwards and he cried out in pain, stumbling away sideways into the bedchamber. James stepped in after him, his sword held loosely in his hand. When Fortin recovered and came charging back at him, Thomas raised his gun and fired, and he did not miss.

Fortin stopped dead in his tracks and then stumbled two steps back, putting an arm out behind him but losing his footing almost immediately. He dropped his sword as he fell, and he put his other hand to his chest, looking down at where the bullet had entered his body. He stared at James and shuffled back until he hit the wall, blood pouring out over his hand. His eyes flickered to Thomas, who had still not lowered his pistol. He looked back at James, who stood poised with sword in hand. He slumped further down against the wall. 

“Meurtriers,” he gasped, lifting his bloody hand in front of his face. “Putains de meurtriers.”

Then he died.

“I think that’s more than enough blood in the room,” James said after a moment.

Thomas swallowed and lowered the gun. “Quite right.” 

James tossed his sword onto the bed and then took Thomas’s weapons from him and did the same with them. Together they carried Fortin back through the study and the main room, Thomas walking backwards with his arms under Fortin’s shoulders and James directing him one way or the other with nods of his head. They had to set him down for a moment so Thomas could open the front door, and that was when he saw the blood that had once again seeped through both James’s bandages and his shirt. 

“You go back in,” he said once they were out on the porch. “I will take him from here.”

The light was low, but Thomas knew exactly the look James was giving him when he said, “You’re carrying him down the stairs on your own, are you?”

Thomas looked pointedly at James’s left side.

James sighed. “It is not –”

“There is no sense in making it worse,” Thomas said firmly. “I will see to it in a moment.”

James looked for a moment like he might argue, but then he let go of Fortin’s legs and pressed down instead on his own wound. “Just make sure he is dead,” he said to Thomas. 

“Make sure?”

“Check,” James said. “Confirm.”

“Have you ever known a man to survive –”

“Thomas,” James said, his voice sharp enough to reveal that he was in at least some pain, however little he might say it was. “When you put him down, please satisfy yourself that he is dead.”

“I will,” Thomas told him. “But you go in and sit on the bed and do nothing else until I arrive.”

“High-handed,” James commented mildly, but he turned and walked slowly back into the house.

Thomas hauled Joseph Fortin down the stairs and lay him under the porch, still and straight and most definitely dead. He would be a little less exposed there to the eyes of birds and the noses of other wild things, and he would not be there for long enough to attract anything really undesirable under their house. If all went well, he would be removed very soon after Thomas made his report in the morning. If all went well, Dominique’s investigation would begin and end with Fortin’s lifeblood on the wall and floor of their bedchamber, where he most certainly had not been invited. 

He closed the front door behind him, barred it and went into his study. He brought the lantern in to James, who was sitting quietly on the bed and inspecting the blade of Fortin’s sword. When Thomas came in he leaned over to set it on the dresser where he had put the others; Thomas hurried forward and did it for him. 

James did not repeat what he had said about the wound being minor; perhaps by now he was as tired of it as Thomas was. When Thomas lifted his shirt off, he raised his arms as necessary but made no further effort to help. He put himself willingly and completely into Thomas’s hands, and though Thomas knew it was because he worried for Thomas’s state of mind and not because he was in any way bothered by the pain, the injury or his upcoming recovery from it, he was grateful for it all the same. 

“We are running out of bandages,” James commented mildly as Thomas unravelled their roll.

“Then I recommend you stop getting injured,” Thomas said.

James let out a scornful breath. “The last time we needed to use bandages was because _you_ walked into the woodpile last spring and cut your arm. Before that, it was Desjardins and his accident with the marlinspike. Before that –”

"Be still, please,” said Thomas, carefully wiping the wound with treated cloth. 

James huffed in pain and mild offence as Thomas did so. “Stifling debate in this way is beneath you,” he said, his voice thin. 

Thomas laid an open hand on his chest and looked him in the eye. “Be still.”

James held his tongue as Thomas wrapped bandages around his stomach, draping one arm over Thomas’s shoulder and holding the other up away from his body. As soon as Thomas tied off the bandages, he let that arm fall and drew a deep breath. “Before that it was you again, because you stepped on glass down at the beach.”

“Today we have used more than all of those occasions combined,” Thomas argued, “and more will be needed tomorrow.”

“But it is still only one event,” James insisted. “You have walked into dangerous objects on more than one occasion, which I think is far more worthy of criticism.”

Thomas shook his head. “More has been used on you than on me,” he said. “That is an undeniable fact.”

James looked down at himself. “Then don’t use so bloody much.”

“I’ll use exactly as much as I think necessary.”

James looked up again, and with the arm he still had over Thomas’s shoulder he drew them together for a kiss. “At least I have not been hit on the head today,” he said.

“Yes,” said Thomas, leaning in for another. “There is that. All the same, it is time you lay down.”

“Rather not move,” James grunted. “This is perfectly comfortable.”

“You need to stay warm.”

“It is already warm.”

Thomas reached around and took James’s weight into his arms then slowly lowered him to lie straight on the bed, with as little impact to the wound as possible. James was heavy and compliant, lifting his legs up onto the bed as soon as he realised what Thomas was doing and only tensing a little as he was set down. “High-handed,” he mumbled.

Thomas pulled the light blanket up over him, though James was quite right that August in this place was never anything other than warm. “Tomorrow you will need to play up this injury somewhat, rather than playing it down,” he said, picking up the bloody bandages and shirt and taking them away to put in water after he had washed his own hands. “It will be best for appearance’s sake that you are the worse for wear after two attempts being made on your life,” he said over his shoulder as he went.

James greeted Thomas with a smile when he came back in. “You are encouraging me to sleep very late into the morning, then,” he said with great amusement.

Thomas went to the dresser, picked up his empty pistol and reloaded it. Once that was done, he extinguished the lantern. “I do not think that will be possible,” he said. “I will need to inform Dominique what has happened at first light. But I am sure you will manage to be adequately surly when he comes to investigate.”

“I will do my very best,” James promised.

“Good,” said Thomas. “I am going back into the main room.”

He heard the bedclothes rustle. “Why?”

“I do not think I will sleep,” said Thomas, “and I would sooner not keep you awake.”

“Rubbish.”

Thomas frowned down at James, though he could no longer see anything of him. “Rubbish?”

“There are lies, and then there are downright lies,” James said. “You know it is no impediment to me sleeping when you lie awake beside me.”

“I am restless,” Thomas said. “It would not be –”

“Go for a walk,” James advised him. “Then come back.”

“I want to watch the front door.”

“There were two, and both are dead. What would you watch for?”

“I am not –”

“You killed a man tonight,” James said, his patience apparently exhausted. “It will do you no good to brood on it alone and in darkness.”

“I did,” Thomas said, frowning now in the direction of where Fortin had fallen. “In this very room.”

“Thomas, I know what this is,” James said. There was sympathy in his voice but also a kind of hardness that did not bode well for the prospects of Thomas’s argument. “If you begin by avoiding it, it will be a great deal more difficult to face when facing it becomes unavoidable.”

“I do not regret what I have done.”

“No,” said James. “I know.”

“He came here intending harm to you and I.”

“I know.”

“He would likely have murdered us in this bed, had we not been expecting him.”

“Quite.”

“I have never condemned you for killing to protect us.”

“No.”

“And yet…”

“I know,” James said again. “I understand it, and I will help you with it. Stay here with me tonight. We will do each other good.”

Of all people, James would know. James had first killed a man when he was fourteen years old and not long afterwards had taken up doing so as a career. He had fought in wars both sanctioned and unsanctioned; he had murdered enemies and he had murdered friends. Nothing about this was new to him, and he loved Thomas more fiercely and completely than anything else in the world and would do everything in his power to help him through it.

Thomas was still thinking of Fortin stepping through their front door, of him staring Thomas in the eye and accusing him of murder with his last breath, but he put the gun back on the dresser and slid into bed to lie on his back beside James, who shifted onto his uninjured side and put his hand on the part of Thomas’s chest that his shirt left exposed, running his fingers from his breastbone into the hollow of his neck, over his Adam’s apple and back down again. 

“I truly do not think I will sleep,” Thomas told him.

“Fine,” said James. “But stay. Brood here, if you must brood, and wake me if you need to talk.”

“You need –”

“Wake me if you need to talk,” James insisted, running the tip of one finger now along Thomas’s collarbone. “I will have your promise on it, or I will sit up all night with you instead.”

“I sincerely doubt that you could. You have already –”

“Try me.”

There was no arguing with that voice. There was no defying it. That was the voice of a man who had not forgotten what it was to hold absolute power and never once made an empty threat. It was not good that James felt the need now to use it, but Thomas found himself impressed beyond words that he could do so while wounded, heavy-eyed, half-naked in the bed beside Thomas, quite literally caressing him, and its effect was not in the least diminished.

“Very well,” said Thomas. There was nothing else he could say.

“Very well?” James asked, his voice suddenly deceptively light.

Thomas sighed. “I will wake you if I need to talk.”

“You promise that you will.”

“I promise.” Thomas wanted to tell James to lie back down properly and go to sleep, but his hand was around the back of Thomas’s neck now, bringing relief to muscles there that had been tense from the moment Thierry Condé had invited James to step away from the group for a private conversation.

“This would be much easier if you would roll over a little,” James commented. 

Thomas reached for James’s hand and held it until it stilled. “Thank you,” he said. “I will take you up on this tomorrow, when matters are resolved. For now, it is best that you sleep.”

“Best for me, perhaps.”

“Tomorrow you may be as attentive and considerate toward me as you please,” Thomas assured him. “You have my word on that as well.”

“The mood may have passed by then,” James said airily.

Thomas returned James’s hand to him and nudged at him until he resumed lying on his back. “I think not,” he said once they lay shoulder-to-shoulder once more.

“So confident,” James remarked. 

“I have every reason to be.”

James took Thomas’s hand and held it resting on the uninjured side of his stomach. “We will do each other good,” he promised quietly again. “Now and always.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, closing his eyes. “We will.”


	32. A Story is Untrue - Day 987

It was Thomas’s second summer up north, and though he had escaped the deadly summer sun of Savannah, he had not managed to escape the damnable humidity that seemed to be everywhere in the colonies at this time of year. When he, Madi and Ekow had sought a place to sit and speak quietly a little apart from the general revelry in the house, Thomas had been quick to claim a somewhat rickety wooden table where he could sit with his back to an open window, though there was little breeze to speak of and the air still sat hot and heavy in his lungs. 

The other advantage of the seat he had chosen was that he could see James standing in the next room, through the gap in the inner wall that could not rightly be called a door but which had been created the year before when the collective decision had been that freedom of movement was far more important than anybody’s privacy in a house that had not seen regular use for a decade and was only now being reclaimed as a meeting place for such people who knew of it and had permission from the Mohawk to be there. The house was settler-built but located in territory long since reclaimed by the native people, and though there were volunteer sentries and guards on duty, it was as safe a place as any for a meeting on such a large scale as this.

A shout went up from the corner of the room, to Thomas’s left and James’s right, where a group of men and women had taken up playing nine men’s morris, though there had been more argument about the rules than there had been gameplay, as far as Thomas had been able to glean. He could understand their conversation only inasmuch as some of them spoke a kind of Dutch that was at least recognisable to his ears, and even then he could only pick up the odd word.

Those who had gathered here in this house over the last week were as motley a crew as Thomas had ever known, and they numbered in the dozens at least. There were Maroons, freed slaves, escaped slaves, free Africans, Dutch, English, Scottish, Portuguese, Mi’kmaq, Mohawk and Lenape, and no doubt there were more whose origins Thomas had not been told explicitly. Today many went about barefoot, some bare-chested, and spirits were high. 

Yesterday had been the day dedicated to remembering and memorialising those who had been lost, a day of personal and collective mourning that had begun with James and Thomas sitting together in the early dawn and exchanging memories of Miranda, marking five years since she had died and fifteen since the last time Thomas had seen her. It had culminated in a great ceremony in honour of Madi’s father, with fires lit as the light faded and chanting that went on long into the night. Today was the last day of the gathering, dedicated to celebration and companionship. The beer and the rum flowed freely, and though Thomas, Madi and Ekow had come to the quietest room of the four, it was still necessary to pitch one’s voice loudly and clearly in order to make oneself heard. 

In this room alone, Thomas counted sixteen souls. There were two small pockets of lively conversation in languages he did not know, the group to Thomas’s left shouting about the game and one group of four men at a round table to his right who had been taking turns to arm-wrestle for the past half-hour at least.

“They will never agree on the rules,” said Ekow, pointing over to the half-dozen crouched over the game of nine men’s morris. “My brother and I cannot even agree on how to set up the board for our own traditional game, and that is without trying to make it match anybody else’s game played elsewhere.”

“That is the fun of it,” said Madi with a small smile. “They know they will never agree, and so they are free to argue as they wish, for as long as they like, and it does not matter whether they understand each other.” Her only concession to the mandated informality of the day was in the lightness of her dress, the rolling-up of its sleeves and the quiet openness of her expression where habitually it was closed. She mourned her father still; Thomas had seen it yesterday, during the ceremony but also afterward, when she had stood close by her mother and held her hand, saying nothing. Thomas knew it was not only her father she thought of when it came to the things that she had lost.

Thomas looked for James again and found him still in intense conversation with Kojo, Awesi, Valentine and Allard, all of whom were at least fifteen years younger than he was and who, despite knowing him only as Mr Smith, who used to be a pirate, regarded him with a kind of rambunctious reverence that Thomas found consistently endearing and James took exceedingly seriously. Whenever there was a gathering like this, or whenever their paths crossed in the line of work, James would always be found fielding questions from one or more of those four, dispensing wisdom with a measured attentiveness that made Thomas daydream, every once in a while, about a world in which James could have become a father.

“They will ask to go everywhere with him soon enough, like little ducklings,” said Madi.

Thomas realised she and Ekow were together watching him watch James, laughter in their eyes.

“You do not like being even this far apart from him, do you?” said Ekow with a softness to his mouth that might have been a smile.

“It is barely twenty yards,” Thomas said.

“That is true,” Ekow allowed. “But it is not an answer to the question I asked.”

Thomas shook his head and returned his attention to the table. There was no harm in looking, not among friends, but every chance he had to speak with Madi was an opportunity not to be missed. With James and Thomas working in the back country and Madi moving from town to town along the coast, opportunities for personal interaction came but rarely. Thomas had heard the surprised whispers back in February that Madi had taken up with a young man by the name of Ekow, and rumours had flown as to the nature of their relationship and the character of the young man in question. Until this week, Thomas had not had the chance to meet him. He wanted to know him much better, and so he would not waste this time that he had staring moony-eyed at James across a room.

“You like to see him as others see him,” Madi said, now gazing speculatively over at James. “He is yours, and you want to see him from as many different perspectives as possible, in order to know as much of him as can be known. You are proud of him.”

Ekow’s eyelashes fluttered, and he glanced down to where his left hand lay flat on the table, suddenly exhibiting a great interest in small movements that his fingers made as he watched them.

“I am,” said Thomas. There was a great deal he could have said on the subject, things he could and should say to Madi about the part she had played in his and James’s current state of happiness, but he saw Ekow’s discomfort and would not pursue the topic. “Can you follow a word of what they say over there?” he asked Ekow, glancing over toward the players in the corner.

“Not at all,” Ekow said, pulling his fingers into a loose fist on the table and looking where Thomas had indicated. “I have spoken Akan and English since childhood, and all the rest is birdsong to me.”

“And that is not the same language as –”

“No,” said Madi. “If we wish to speak to each other, we must use your language to do it.” She did not do Thomas the kindness of smiling to take the edge off her words. She did not even look at him to in any way soften their impact. That was not the sort of kindness Madi believed in, and no more was Thomas owed it.

“Indeed,” he said.

“I have met slaves able to speak half a dozen languages,” said Ekow mournfully. “I, who have been free as long as I can remember, look a dullard beside them.”

“Do not concern yourself with that,” Madi told him. “I have known good men who could barely speak the language they were raised in.”

Ekow made no reply to that, turning instead to Thomas. “What of you, Thomas? I believe you have an education beyond anyone else here.”

“I have read Homer in the original Greek,” said Thomas, unwilling to detail the multitude of privileges and advantages he held over his confederates by virtue only of an accident of birth. “Much good may it do me now.”

“Greek and Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic,” said Madi promptly. “Do not pretend modesty.”

The evasion had been motivated by guilt more than modesty, but Thomas would not argue the point with her. “James told you this,” he said instead.

“I asked him,” said Madi. “I need to know the skills of all those I work with in order that we might all be deployed where we are best suited. He needs little encouragement, I have found, to share just how highly he thinks of you.”

“He exaggerates,” said Thomas, feeling warm inside.

“Of course,” Madi said with a gracious nod. Then she smiled. “But not on purpose.”

“Abenayo speaks of starting colleges to teach our own languages and our histories, before they are lost,” said Ekow. “She has begun to collect stories we have heard from our elders and our countrymen and speaks of translating them as widely as possible.”

“Colleges?” said Madi, turning to him in surprise.

“They will not let us into theirs.”

“No,” Madi agreed. “Not until they have something to gain from it.”

“We know literacy must rise, and community must be developed and sustained,” Ekow said earnestly. “Everyone speaks of it, but few seek actively to achieve it.”

“Abenayo has not spoken to me of this.”

“She will not bring it to you until she is certain it is a good idea. That is her way.”

“It is a good idea,” Madi said firmly. “The question is, as it has ever been, one of funding.”

Thomas thought of James’s chest full of black pearls, of untold wealth buried on a secret island in a location known only to one man. Madi was possibly the only person on this earth to whom James would divulge the location. She had only to ask, and she did not.

“My mother has sent Richard in search of a printing press that can be sold or leased to us,” said Madi. “It is something I intend to discuss with you, Thomas, before we depart this place. I am told you have experience of such things.”

Thomas nodded. “Some.”

“I will first speak with Abenayo and what ideas she may have as to its use.”

“And speak with Koshi as well,” said Ekow. “He is always complaining that his children speak better English than Dagbani, that the Europeans steal our children even when they are born free. He will want to assist with this.”

Madi placed her hand over Ekow’s on the table and gave it a soft squeeze. The side of his mouth twitched, and a look of quiet satisfaction came into his eyes. “Thank you,” Madi said to him. “For all that you do.”

Ekow turned his hand under hers so it lay palm up and they could link their fingers together. “I do not consider it a hardship,” he said.

A group of four women came through the door across the room and to the right, directly approaching their table. The first of them looked nervous, but the rest were laughing. “Madi, Madi,” they said. “Julianne wants to show you something. You will not believe what she has done.”

“We do not mean to interrupt,” said the nervous woman, Julianne, whose accent was faintly Scottish and whose complexion spoke of both European and African ancestry.

“We do!” insisted the woman holding her elbow, who was dressed in such a dazzlingly unpleasant assortment of colours that it must have been done to intentional effect. “We do mean to interrupt.”

Madi removed her hand from Ekow’s slowly, her fingers lingering in contact with his until she lifted her hand away completely. She rose to her feet and adjusted the fall of her dress. “Excuse me,” she said to Thomas. “Urgent business, as you see.”

“Come!” said another of the women, taking Madi by the arm in a gesture that Thomas could only describe as sisterly. Madi, though remaining dignified, did not seem much displeased by it. They walked quickly out of the room, the five of them, and Thomas found himself smiling after them, pleased to see that there were at least some who recognised Madi as the young woman she was and were willing to treat her as one. Notwithstanding that Madi had been raised daughter of a queen, she had never become one. She was a leader here and could not help being one by her very nature, but she did not rule. 

Thomas sat quietly with Ekow, who he had met only four days before and never before been alone with, and sensed a companionship between the two of them, a likeness and an understanding which defied their very limited acquaintance and the wholly different lives they had led. Thomas was not one for silence, generally speaking, with strangers he thought well of, preferring to become acquainted as quickly and as well as possible through the exchange of words and ideas, but with Ekow he found he enjoyed sitting quietly, and there was nothing lacking in the silence that grew between them. Ekow was reserved, possibly even shy, but he had a warmth and a readiness to listen about him that put those he met quite immediately at ease. It did not hurt that he was soft-featured and soft-voiced and beautiful, younger even than Madi, with big black eyes that radiated sincerity. 

“He watches you, as you watch him,” Ekow said a few minutes later, speaking quietly enough that Thomas had to lean in a little in order to properly hear him over the noise in the room. “He turns himself in every room so he knows where you are without having to look for you.” His fingers twitched nervously against the table. “Was it always so for the two of you?”

Thomas glanced at James, who now stood quietly listening to an argument between Awesi and Allard, his expression considered and neutral. For all that Thomas understood the question and considered it a compliment to have been asked, he was not willing to divulge to Ekow, not in this early stage of their acquaintance, how torturous it had been for Thomas to remain professional with James for as long as he had, how difficult he had found James to read for such a long time, how desperately and impatiently he had watched for a sign – a _conclusive_ sign – that James would be receptive to any or all the things that Thomas had hope of in his heart. Thomas’s sympathies were with Ekow, and he understood what had driven him to ask this question of Thomas in particular, but any answer Thomas could give belonged as much to James as it did to Thomas. Even if he wished to share the beginning of their story, Thomas would not do so without James’s assent and, ideally, his presence. “It has been a long road to bring us here,” he settled for saying. 

“I think Madi can walk away and not think of me until she returns,” Ekow said with a resigned kind of sadness. “When we are apart, I think of her always.”

Ekow’s question had been, then, not so much one of genuine interest in Thomas’s history as it was a device by which he could begin to speak of his own woes, as was so often the way with young men in love. Thomas had become very familiar with the practice as a young man himself, whose peers had quickly come to realise that Thomas, as a concerned and considerate friend, would listen to and sympathise with all kinds of heartache and heartbreak without ever entering the fray with a story of his own, never countering with a young lady of his own acquaintance who had bewitched or betrayed him. Any boy who came to Thomas to speak of love or lust would always be able to hold the floor.

In the end, Thomas had grown weary enough of it that upon finishing at Eton he had simply stopped associating with those who had no conversation other than the ribald or the romantic. That was when the whispers had started, but Thomas had paid them no mind. He knew what motivated them, and they were nothing when measured against the life Thomas intended to lead from that moment on.

This, however, was entirely different. Ekow was not a peer seeking to corner Thomas in order to brag or belittle but a young man uncertain of his place in the world coming to Thomas, a man he barely knew and yet apparently already trusted, for counsel. It was a rare and precious privilege, at Thomas’s age, to be considered a person to whom a lovestruck young man could come to for advice, and Thomas savoured his first experience of it. “This is something you can discuss with her,” he said, feeling uncommonly gentle. 

“I do discuss it with her,” Ekow said. “She tells me she loves me, and I believe that she does. I do not call her a liar, Thomas. But she also tells me that there is no one man in this world more important to her than the cause she fights for. She tells me she has a duty to her people that must come above everything else, any man she might ever love, and I understand that, and I am glad she says such things to me instead of pretending otherwise, but then she looks at him in a way she has never looked at me. She loves him as a man and as part of her life’s purpose, I can see it plain as day, and I – what am I to do in the face of that?” 

Thomas turned in his seat to fully face Ekow, who sat stiffly, his dark eyes glistening but his face dry and still as stone. “James and Madi,” said Thomas, “they are not –”

“That does not matter,” Ekow said with a tiny shake of his head. “It makes no difference whether they are or they are not. I am concerned about the heart.”

It was one thing to be flattered by being asked for such advice as this, but it was far from an easy task to determine what would be the right advice to give. Thomas glanced at James absently, trying to think what he could say to this young man who had so completely and with so little warning bared his heart for Thomas to see and to tend to. He found James’s eyes already on him and quickly looked away again. It would be nothing but salt into the wound for Ekow if Thomas chose this moment to start smiling across the room at the man he loved. 

“She has a place for you in her heart,” said Thomas. “As you have said.”

Ekow grimaced, and his jaw clenched.

“Go on,” Thomas said. “Speak it aloud.”

“Third place,” Ekow said at Thomas’s urging, and immediately looked bitterly disappointed in himself for having said it.

“Do not put her to a choice,” Thomas warned, though he hoped such a thing would not need to be said.

“I will not,” Ekow said firmly. “I know what that choice would be. Madi prefers to tell hurtful truths than hide in lies, and so she has told me what would happen if I tell her she must choose. I am not trying to end the relationship but to improve it. If I cannot take the place of these other things she has given her heart to, I wish to at the very least join them. That is why I come to you.”

Thomas thought then, for a single stunning moment, that Ekow had somehow seen directly into Thomas’s own heart, to assume so confidently that they had a shared experience of navigating both a life’s calling and a true love. To have come to Thomas specifically asking this and knowing he would understand would either take extraordinary insight or very specific knowledge.

“I wanted to ask you,” Ekow continued, “if you have enough time, if you are together for so many years and truly commit to one another in that time, if these things can change.”

That was a far simpler and safer question and yet one which Thomas was far less qualified to answer. It would be eight more years, God willing, until Thomas had spent as much time with James as they had spent apart, and he doubted the few years they had spent together in the New World put him in a position to speak to Ekow with any authority about longevity in love. Nor, certainly, did his experience of matrimony. “All relationships will change over time,” he said, frustrated at being reduced to platitudes, however sincerely he might mean them. “They cannot but do otherwise.”

Ekow nodded. When he looked up at Thomas next, Thomas could tell by the resolve in his eyes that he was coming to the heart of the matter. “Do you know much about John Silver?”

Thomas was unable to hold in his sigh at being asked another question he could not answer anywhere near as helpfully as he would like. Perhaps, in time, Ekow would earn enough of Madi’s trust, and hence James’s, and hence Thomas’s, to be told the truth of all their histories. That day was a long way away yet, if it would ever come at all. “There are things I have heard,” Thomas said.

From his resigned nod, that seemed to be the sort of answer Ekow had expected. “Do you think if I ask James about Silver and Madi, he will talk to me? He knew Silver, did he not?”

Thomas looked at James. He was speaking calmly and intently to Awesi, who was shaking her head as he spoke but holding back from interrupting. James did not like to speak of John Silver, and nor did Thomas much like him to. Over time, James had substantially recovered from the betrayal that had been done to him, but his bitterness about what Silver had done to Madi and their war grew with each passing day. James made no secret of his rancour in public or in private, and every time he directly confronted it, its shadow lingered on him a good while afterwards. Thomas preferred not to see him that way and found it frustrating beyond belief that there was never anything he could do to hasten James’s return to his usual self.

“It is a bad idea?” Ekow asked glumly. “I thought it might be.”

“It is not a bad idea, of itself,” said Thomas. “He would be able to advise you better than I, but it will not be an easy conversation on either side.”

“I am not looking for an easy conversation,” Ekow said, a touch of scorn in his voice. “I am trying to find the way forward.”

“Then I do recommend you speak with James. He wants the very best for her.”

“What if he does not think I am the best for her? What if he speaks against me? I know she will listen to him.”

Sometimes Thomas forgot that to most people James was an enigma, difficult to understand even for those who were inclined to like him. If he had remembered that in the beginning, this conversation may not have had to be anywhere near so convoluted. The solution to it may all along have been as easy as revealing to Ekow one simple truth that Thomas had taken for granted that he already knew.

“James likes you,” Thomas said. “He is glad that you and Madi are close.” 

Ekow leaned forward and looked intently at Thomas, his eyes shining with sudden hope. “Is he? Does he really?”

Thomas smiled, feeling a relief of his own that he had finally been able to offer something useful. “Yes,” he said. “As do I.”

Ekow looked over at James for a moment, then back at Thomas. “He truly does?”

“He will help you,” Thomas assured him. “If you ask.”

Madi came back through the door then, her step uncommonly light, and Thomas had rarely seen a man more besotted, more transformed when a woman came into a room. There would be few women in the world who would not be touched by the smile Ekow gave Madi as she resumed her seat beside him. Indeed, in Thomas’s younger days he was sure he would have been powerless against it, had he lived in circles where such a thing could be seen and admired. When Madi looked at Ekow and returned his smile, Thomas saw affection and attraction in her gaze, but she did not project all of what she felt out for the world to see. Her smile did not shine so brightly as his, whether that was by choice or by nature, but it was deep and contented and made Thomas’s heart hum to see it.

“This is supposed to be a celebration, is it not?” Ekow said to Madi, reducing his smile from a blaze to a gentle glow. “I do not see much of that going on.”

“Just to be all together is a celebration,” said Madi. “To be surrounded by friends and spend the day without care.”

Ekow put his elbow on the table and flicked one finger in the direction of James and his disciples in the next room. “They are terrible at celebrating,” he declared. “They have been talking business all day, and we should not let them do it.”

“What do you propose?” Madi asked. Her smiles certainly did come easier when they were directed Ekow’s way.

“The three tenets of celebration,” Ekow replied. “Dance, drink and debauchery.” He sought out her hand with his and held it lightly, carefully.

It was high time Thomas left them to each other. “I will inform James of his dereliction of duty,” he said, rising to his feet. No sooner had he taken three steps away from the table than James looked up and saw him approaching, and so when Thomas reached the quintet, they had already rearranged themselves to allow him a place in their circle.

“I have been instructed to remind you that you are supposed to be celebrating,” Thomas said, looking from one to the other. He saw so much intent on the four young faces that he was tempted to disobey the decree of celebration and instead join them in their discussions, but he held firm and stayed his course. “This is all looking far too serious.”

“In fact, we are celebrating,” said Valentine, a young man with long dark hair, a perpetually frowning face and grim demeanour. He spoke English slowly and with a heavy accent, though Thomas suspected the speed of his speech had more to do with his crooked jaw and the wide scar along his right jawbone than it did with any difficulty grasping the language. He had made no concessions at all to the prescribed festivity of the day, dressed in sober browns and greys, as he always was when Thomas saw him. He nudged Kojo, who stood only as tall as Valentine’s shoulder. 

“We are celebrating the opportunity we have been given to stand in conference with a great man,” Kojo said with a sly smile at Thomas. Though he was as dark as Valentine was pale and went by only the one name, he spoke English as one who had been born in that country and been quite thoroughly educated there. His fashions were mixed and to quite favourable effect: voluminous red trousers tied at the ankle, a spotlessly clean white shirt and a blue jacket he claimed had been given to him by a _soldado de cuera_ whose life he had saved in a village in Cuba. Each time this story was challenged, it became a little more far-fetched in its next telling; Thomas would be very interested to learn what it had been in its very beginning. “We celebrate our freedom by plotting to expand it throughout the land.” Kojo threw his arms out wide, very intentionally hitting Valentine on one side and Allard on the other. Valentine ignored the blow completely; Allard, with studied nonchalance, put his forearm on Kojo’s shoulder and leaned on him, gradually increasing and increasing the weight. 

“That is not what celebration is, and you know it,” said Awesi, whose mother had been Dutch and her father a slave, who was tall and strong and quiet and kept her hair short in order to better pose as a man when doing so would be to her advantage. Today, though, she wore a long red skirt and a fine white blouse with a round collar embroidered with golden thread, and she wore it well. “Talk as educated as you like; it will not make what you say any more true.”

“I could be convinced to celebrate,” James said, looking directly and very expressively at Thomas.

“Oh, yes, as could I,” said Allard, picking up on James’s meaning with unhesitating enthusiasm and lifting his arm off Kojo, who sagged a little in relief. Allard was not particularly tall, but he was heavy with muscle and wore a thick black beard, which made him appear a great deal older than he really was. The texture of his hair and beard spoke of some degree of African ancestry, distant though it may be. When he smiled he looked a boy still, with dimpled cheeks and freckles on his nose, and his voice, when he was not deepening it for effect, was remarkably light and pleasant. He spoke with complete command of English but such a heavy accent Thomas sometimes struggled to understand him. “I didn’t get to do any of that last year at all, despite many, many promises.”

“You decided not to do any of that last year,” Kojo corrected him, rubbing his shoulder where Allard had been leaning on it. “I asked you very particularly, and you –”

“You did not _ask_ , you liar,” said Allard. “You said, _I wish –_ ”

“All right, all right,” Kojo said quickly. “Let’s not get too specific.”

Allard laughed and said no more.

“Lucky for you who have someone to celebrate with,” Awesi said glumly. 

“It is a day of new beginnings,” said Kojo. “Beautiful men abound, present company excepted. Ask somebody.”

“Ask somebody?” Awesi said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “Who am I –”

“Ask Valentine,” suggested Allard. “He’s a grumpy fuck, could do with some company.” Then he turned to Kojo. “Present company excepted, my arse.”

“We can discuss your arse later,” Kojo said primly.

“A grumpy fuck is the last thing I want,” said Awesi.

“Thank you,” Valentine said to Allard. “Thank you very much for that.”

Allard shrugged. “Cheer the fuck up, then, chagrijnige oude man.”

“You know I don’t speak your stupid fucking language.”

James cleared his throat loudly, finally taking his eyes off Thomas, and the four of them nigh snapped to attention. “Go and celebrate,” he said, looking from one to the other. “You heard the man.” None of them moved. “Now.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Kojo, grabbing Allard by the belt and dragging him away.

James turned his attention to Valentine and Awesi, who still remained. Awesi gave him and Thomas a little smile and a nod and turned to leave, but Valentine hurried to stand in her way, holding his hand palm-up in her direction. At first she looked at him as though he were making a bad joke, to be easily dismissed. As he remained steadfast before her, she looked repeatedly between his hand and his face with growing disbelief in her eyes.

“I am not always so grumpy,” he said to her.

Her puzzled expression did not change for a few moments, but then she shrugged her shoulders and took his hand, and the two of them walked out of the room in step.

“We were never so young as that,” James said once they were gone.

Thomas looked back and saw the table where he had been sitting with Madi and Ekow was now empty. He turned side-on and gestured for James to precede him through the hole in the wall that served as a door, so James led Thomas to the table, sitting down in the chair Madi had recently vacated as Thomas sat back where he had been. 

“We were never so young,” he said again once they were settled.

“I was, and you were,” said Thomas. “But no, we two were not.” 

James grimaced. “And now we are old men.”

“It is becoming their world,” said Thomas. “Do you not find that a relief?”

“I do,” said James. “I do.”

“And you an elder statesman in it,” Thomas said, half teasingly and half in earnest congratulation.

James opened his mouth to speak, stopped, and let his breath out in a sigh. A smile threatened but did not manage to come out all the way. He sat there unable to come up with any words but looking very pleased with himself all the same.

“Ekow wishes to speak to you about –”

Two women and one man came over in a hurry. “We have a wager,” announced the youngest of them, a dark-skinned woman with her head shaved and a gold earring in her left ear. She claimed the vacant chair in a rush of semi-coordinated limbs; the other two, an Indian woman with her hair in a long braid and an African man whose hair grew tall and free, stood one on either side of her. Thomas did not know any of their names.

“Congratulations,” said James. Thomas kicked him lightly under the table.

“Udo says you are the only one who can settle it,” the woman continued, profoundly untroubled by James’s response. Thomas was inclined to like her only for that, though he suspected her indifference to James’s remark was in large part due to her appreciable state of intoxication, which also went a long way to explaining her two apparent bodyguards.

“Does he,” said James.

Udo was one of the few who had known James as Flint, but Thomas knew little of him other than that. He did not mix freely with the company; Thomas had met him only twice. On both of those occasions he had made his lack of interest in Thomas very clear. All James had ever said about him was that he was dedicated and loyal and not particularly enamoured of James, and so Thomas had left him to himself. 

“You were in the Navy, were you not?” the woman asked James. “Before you were a pirate.”

“I was,” said James. 

“The question I have is about William Kidd,” she said, focused intently on James’s face as she spoke. “Sara says he was a pirate, but Sophia says he was not. I have decided I will write a play, a great play about all the most notorious pirates of the age, and Sophia says I cannot include Kidd because he was not a real pirate. Udo said you would know what the English thought of him and what the pirates thought, because you’ve been both of them, and so you might know the truth better than anyone.”

“Write a good enough play, and your word will decide it,” said James.

She stared at him with wide eyes. “What?”

James sat back in his chair, shot Thomas an apologetic look and then gave her his full attention. “Do you think William Shakespeare worried about whether the things he wrote into his plays were true?” he said. “He sought to entertain, to shape public sentiment and earn himself royal favour, and he succeeded in all three.”

She still did nothing but stare.

“What is your aim,” James asked, slowly and clearly, “in writing this play?”

“Well,” she said, eyeing him warily, “I was talking to a man called – what was he called?”

“Jaco,” said the woman on her right.

“Jaco,” she said. “Yes. And Jaco said that in his crew, before he left it, everyone said Captain Flint had stolen the treasure chest from the Maroons and Long John Silver had rightly shot him for it but then sunk deep into grief at Flint’s betrayal and having had to kill his closest friend and so he swore off the account forever.” She turned and spat on the floor to show her opinion of such a story. “Jaco said he was shocked to come here and hear how people spoke of them completely the other way around to what he’d heard. And I’ve always known who was the hero and who was the villain in that story, but most people don’t, and so I think someone needs to tell the world how things really were. And pirates love theatre, don’t they, so I thought why not a play?”

“And what has Kidd to do with it?” asked James with a kind of benign fascination.

“Well,” she said, “I thought someone like you, who first chased pirates and then became one … you know, people will watch the start of the play and see you as a pirate-hunting hero, a Navy captain, and they will like you because they know they are supposed to because you are a proper hero like in all the other stories. Then, when you change your mind and become a pirate, because they like you they will follow you. You trick them, you see, partway through.”

“I did not chase pirates, and I was not a Navy captain.”

“So? William Shakespeare didn’t worry about whether the things he wrote in his plays were true.”

“Very good point,” Thomas said. James, who had been fighting back a smile for a while now, shot him a reproving look. Thomas looked innocently back at him.

“So I was thinking about having you catch Kidd in the first act, and showing it as a triumph of good over evil and all of that rubbish, and then later you realise it wasn’t so simple, and by the end nothing about anything is simple at all.”

“I really don’t think you need my help with this,” said James, sounding genuinely impressed, as Thomas was too by this point.

“But I don’t know the details,” she complained. “I mean, you’re older than almost anyone here. Probably older than everyone. You know things about what happened and how they happened. And, you know, maybe it doesn’t have to be true exactly – Shakespeare, as you say – but it does have to be realistic if anyone’s going to believe it. I have never been a pirate. I don’t know very many pirates. I don’t know a jib from a … from a mainsail.”

“If you’re still excited about this when you’re sober, we can discuss it,” said James.

“How many of them did you know?” said the man with her, who was rail-thin, shirtless and unquestionably sober. “If Udo knew you when you were a pirate, you must have sailed with Flint and Silver, at the very least. And Jack Rackham, too.”

“And Anne Bonny,” the young woman said, half-turning in her chair to glare up at him before turning back to James. 

“I sailed in their fleet,” James to the man, far less cordially than he had been speaking to the aspiring playwright sitting next to him. “I knew them to a degree. Udo can tell you as much as I can, probably more.” The man gave him the very slightest of nods, unimpressed with and unsurprised by the answer.

“He just was sick of talking to us, really,” the young woman said. “He said he did not care to talk about Flint and Silver and all the rest but that Madi and James had been there along with him and might have something to say about it. We do not see Madi very often, but we saw her going off with Ekow. We see you even less, and I’ve never met you properly, and you were sitting right here, so here we are.”

The man by her side looked at Thomas next. “Were you there?”

“No,” said Thomas. “The only pirates I have ever known are those here with us in this room.” He caught a twitch of James’s mouth and was glad that he at least could appreciate the art in the answer.

“I was thinking of having Long John Silver as a sort of Iago,” said the young woman, leaning toward James as though she could extract his thoughts directly from his head if she put herself in close enough proximity to it. The woman behind her reached over and pulled her back to sit upright. “I asked Udo if it was a good comparison to use, and Udo would not answer, and that leaves you and Madi. Udo says you like to read.”

“If you ask Madi that question I will tear you limb from limb,” said James, quick and final, no trace of humour on his face or in his voice.

“Yes, I know,” she said, unbothered. “Udo said the exact same thing. So I thought I’d ask you and not her and keep all my limbs.”

“We will discuss it when you are sober,” James said.

“But I don’t intend to be sober today,” she protested. “And we are leaving tomorrow.”

“Then drink and leave,” said James. “Forget you ever thought of writing a play.”

“You _wish_ I would,” she said defiantly.

“Yes,” James agreed. “I think I do.”

She regarded him closely then, her eyes narrowed. “Too bad,” she declared. “In … five hours I’m going to find you and I’m going to be sober and I’m going to ask you again, Long John Silver and Iago.” She pointed at him firmly and then pointed out of the window for reasons impenetrable to Thomas’s mind. “You’ll see. Five hours. Count on it.”

“I can’t wait,” James told her.

“Well, you’ll have to,” she said, rising to her feet with only a slight wobble. “You will have to wait for five hours. That’s a very long time.” 

When she walked away the man went with her, but the woman remained back for a moment. “Thank you,” she said to James. Once James nodded his acknowledgement to her, she turned and left.

“Just imagine,” Thomas said quietly. “Assume for a moment that she is going to remember anything at all of that conversation. Imagine if, one day, she finds out who it was she was speaking to.”

James chuckled. “I would pay good money to see it.”

“As would I.”

The silence that fell then was of a very particular nature. _I could be convinced to celebrate,_ James had said, and Thomas doubted that he had so quickly forgotten.

“There was one very good point I thought she made,” he said slowly.

“Mmm,” said James, nudging his foot against Thomas’s under the table and holding his gaze with intent.

“Five hours is indeed a very long time.”

James said nothing, only looked and looked at Thomas.

Thomas glanced around the room. The arm-wrestlers had moved on and the players of nine men’s morris had grown much more subdued, but he still counted a dozen people in the room, including themselves. “I’m not sure where it is that people are going for privacy,” he said a little breathlessly. “Every room is open to the public, and the staircase is completely unusable.”

“They’re going outside, I think,” said James, putting his foot atop Thomas’s and leaving it there.

“Outside,” Thomas echoed.

“Oh, like we’ve never –”

“Outside it is,” Thomas said before James could widely publicise any particular activities in which they had previously partaken out of doors. He freed his foot from beneath James’s, stood up and glanced out of the window. Madi and Ekow were walking away from the house, hand in hand. “How I long for the dirt and the bark and the infernal biting insects.”

“Well, we could stay here, if you would prefer,” said James, settling back in the chair he had been about to rise from. “Conversation, they say, is a gre –” He broke off as Thomas leaned over him, one hand on the table and the other on the arm of his chair.

“Are you coming?” Thomas asked him.

James gifted Thomas with one of his softest smiles, small and crooked and openly adoring. “Yes.”


	33. A Story is True - Day 1597

It had become their custom to come out to the front porch together in the late afternoon if the weather was calm, Thomas sitting in Madame Gascoigne’s old rocking chair and puzzling over his knitting and James climbing into his hammock with a book. When Thomas needed advice or assistance with what he was knitting he would bring it over to James; James would sometimes read passages aloud to Thomas and ask his opinion of them. Sometimes both the knitting and the book would sit unattended to while they talked; sometimes Thomas got so swept away by his own words that it took him some time to realise he had quite literally put James to sleep with them.

Sometimes, though, James had something to read that absorbed him fully, and then he read as though he were perfectly alone and far removed from the rest of the world. In Thomas’s company and the comfort of his own home James, who was always so very conscious of when he was observed and when he was not, who diligently and perpetually monitored his surroundings for the slightest sniff of danger, occasionally disregarded it all to the extent that he was no longer aware of even Thomas’s eyes upon him. When this occurred, Thomas could not look away. He had never imagined that it could be gratifying to be entirely forgotten about, but so it was. James was still, quiet and wholly his natural self, and Thomas was fortunate beyond imagining that he could sit here in the gentle sea breeze, pretending to knit, and watch him for as long as his heart desired. 

James read more slowly now than he had used to, and reading French required far more of his concentration than English. When James was not thinking of being observed, Thomas could see the effects of both. He could see that sometimes James’s eyes passed over the same passage three or four times and that sometimes he had to close his eyes for a moment and rest before opening them again and continuing to read. Despite this, James was quite determined to work his way through Madame Gascoigne’s small and eclectic library; Thomas was equally determined that he would one day be able to knit a wearable sock quite independently from James’s advice and without needing him to put right any mistakes. There was something very satisfying, something freeing, about having a struggle whose success or failure was a matter only of personal pride and nothing else of any consequence. 

Thomas had quite lost track of his stitches as he came around to the heel, and so he would need to either abandon the thing entirely or consult with James about what was to be done. It would require something infinitely more important than knitting for Thomas to interrupt James as he was now.

So instead, he sat back and he watched. 

* * *

Thomas saw the three men coming up the hill toward them, where James did not. He smiled to see them, though he only recognised two. 

“James,” he said quietly. “James.”

James looked over the top of his book at Thomas, his mind still elsewhere.

“They have found us.”

“Have they?” James turned his head and looked down the hill, peering at the figures coming up toward them. “I told you it would be Cunynghame,” he said, putting a finger in his book as though to keep the place, though he did not yet close it.

“I cannot recognise the third,” said Thomas. “I do not think it is anyone we know.”

“Cunynghame makes friends easily,” James said, turning back to his book.

Thomas watched the three of them come up the hill, William leading the way and Mark and the stranger walking side by side behind him. William looked largely unchanged by the years that had passed since Thomas had last seen him. His hair was longer and rather shaggy, and he wore the beginnings of a beard, but Thomas had no difficulty reconciling the man he saw approaching his home with the one he had known in Savannah and for those few months afterwards. He alone was unarmed, and there was a brisk impatience in his step, but Thomas doubted that anyone observing the three of them would assume William their leader. There was too much lightness in him for that, too much brimming eagerness; the impression was more one of a child dissatisfied with the speed of those following, who nevertheless knew that he was not permitted to venture too far ahead of the main party.

Mark Higgins had only ever been a shadow of himself in Savannah; so much was clear from only a brief glance at him now. He was taller, heavier and older than both his companions and carried himself accordingly, his shoulders open and his strides long and firm. He was clean-shaven and wore his hair in a long braid that reached the middle of his back, and the effect was something very pleasing to the eye. He had a sword at his hip and a pistol tucked into his belt but swung his arms freely as he walked, perfectly confident that he would not need to be using them. Here was a man who, just as James had predicted a good four years ago, had become near-unrecognisable upon gaining and growing into his freedom. 

The man walking beside Mark was young, small and almost dangerously thin. He might be twenty, Thomas supposed, though he would not be surprised to hear he was seventeen or twenty-three. His hair was dark and fell to his shoulders in thick curls; his beard was short and pointed neatly at the tip. There was a careful economy in his movement, his bearing solemn and reserved even as he matched his companions’ brisk pace. He had a hand on his belt within easy reach of at least two blades and one pistol as he walked, but he appeared no more concerned by his surroundings than Mark did. Indeed, he had had his eye fixed on the porch from the first moment Thomas had seen him, and it did not once move from there as the three of them made their approach.

William raised his hand when he reached the gate, and Thomas beckoned him in. He hurried through and jogged all the way to the bottom of the stairs, leaving the other two to close the gate behind them as they followed at a rather more dignified pace. The wide smile on his face grew puzzled when he saw what Thomas was holding in his hands.

“Thomas,” he said, his tone incredulous. “Are you knitting?”

“I am trying.”

“He is not ready to attempt socks,” James said, his eyes still on his book. “And yet here he is attempting them.”

Mark and the stranger came up behind William then, Mark looking closely at the house and the other looking curiously at James. “You two have done very well for yourself, then,” Mark said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Word came to us at Christmas that you were looking for us,” said James, finally looking down at them all. “We have been expecting you for upwards of four months.”

William made an exasperated noise that was so familiar to Thomas he had to smile. “If you knew we were looking,” he said to James, “you could have made yourselves a little easier to find.”

James affected puzzlement. “We are easy to find,” he said.

“You are not,” William retorted. “You have everyone within fifty miles of here lying about your whereabouts. We went all the way to New Orleans in search of you. At one point we thought we were going to have to go to Fort Rosalie as well.”

James grinned and lowered his eyes back to his book.

“It is good to see you again, Thomas,” William said heartily, still hovering at the bottom of the stairs. “I am so glad to see you well.”

“And I you,” Thomas said. He looked at the young man they had with them, who was still looking at James and now running one finger thoughtfully down the line of his beard.

“Oh, sorry!” said William. “This is Abraam, a good friend of ours. Bram, this is Thomas, and that one is James.”

“My name is Abraam Taragano,” the man said with quite pointed emphasis on the surname. His voice was light and his accent English. Thomas did not much like the hint of a demand in his tone nor the expectant look he was directing their way.

“I am pleased to meet you,” Thomas said to him, rising to his feet. “Please do come in.”

Thomas opened the door for them and they filed in: William, Mark then Abraam. James remained in his hammock looking longingly at his book, which he held closed in front of him with both hands. “What I would not give to be propelled to the moon myself at this time,” he said gravely. “We have been too slow to build our flying machine.”

“You told me the moment you read it that you thought such a contraption was ludicrous,” Thomas said, coming to give him a hand up out of the hammock.

“And so it is,” James said, letting himself be pulled up. “But that does not mean I would not attempt it in preference to whatever is about to occur now.”

“Be at least a little hospitable, please,” Thomas said. “It will do you no harm.”

“Very well,” James said. “You invite them to stay for dinner, and I will make it for them.”

They walked into the house together to see their three visitors already spread around the main room. Mark had gone to stand by the fireplace, William was inspecting the furniture and Abraam was looking out the east window toward the village’s crop of wild rice that, after three years of increasingly despairing effort, was finally beginning to come good.

“I should have known you would be house-proud, Thomas,” William said. “This place is marvellous.”

“It even smells nice,” said Mark, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

James had gone straight to put his book back into the study; Thomas did not incriminate him with either look or word, only invited them all to sit around the large table he and James had built together when they had started to invite people into their home for something more than brief social visits. The more comfortable chairs were arranged in front of the fireplace, and there were six plain wooden chairs set around the table. Thomas did not think that either Mark or Abraam missed the significance of the size of the table, nor the number of chairs placed around it.

Thomas sat in his usual place facing the door. Mark and William sat opposite him and Abraam sat facing the fireplace, where he too had a clear line of sight to the door but seemed far more interested in watching James build the fire.

“So,” Thomas said. “To what do we owe the visit?”

“We heard about the slave uprisings along the German Coast,” Mark said. “We had an idea who might have been behind them.”

Thomas was saved from having to respond to that by the fact that all three of his visitors looked directly at James, who gave the growing fire a little more attention before shooting them an irritated look, rising to his feet and brushing his hands off on his trousers. “Your idea was wrong,” he said. 

Mark turned to Thomas with considerable surprise; William was immediately crestfallen. Abraam looked slowly between Thomas and James, frowning.

“We had no involvement in it,” Thomas told them. 

“But –”

“Not every enslaved person needs someone to come from elsewhere and show them how to revolt,” James said pointedly, taking his seat beside Thomas. “Many are able to work that out all on their own.”

“Well,” said Mark. “I see you’ve only grown friendlier over the years.”

James leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his clasped hands, his eyes moving from Mark to William to Abraam. “I have had two attempts made on my life since I have come here,” he said. “Forgive me if I am not overcome with joy at you having publicly sought us out based on a wild surmise that you did not bother to substantiate.”

“But we came to help,” William said.

“With what?”

William glanced at Abraam and then Mark as he considered that question, his heavy brows drawn close together. 

“If you have come to help us, you are misguided,” James said. “If you have come to help them, you will find yourselves woefully outmatched.”

“For my part,” said Mark, “I came to help them.” When James’s piercing gaze turned toward him, he bore it quite comfortably. “I have spent four years now with a people who engage in warfare against empires. They make alliances and treaties and they fight over territory. That is the world I have lived in almost all my life. I can accept defeat in war and the consequences that flow from it, but this is not a war. There are not two sides to it. There is no open engagement with a foe. It is torture and abuse with no end in sight. It is sick, and I cannot bear to see it spreading.”

“You came in and freed us,” William said to James, heartened by Mark’s words. “I don’t think it is right for us to then turn our backs on everybody else who is in the same position.”

“Their position is not the same,” Thomas said. 

Mark nodded. “It is worse.”

“It is incalculably worse,” James said. “But the fact is that whatever uprisings you have heard of have had nothing to do with us and your search has been in vain.”

“I wouldn’t say it has been in vain,” Mark said. “It’s good to see you both.”

“Is it?” Without another word, James stood and left the table, walking around the corner toward the pantry and out of sight.

“What news is there of the others?” Thomas asked into the quiet that followed.

“Tracy, Louis and George went back to Carolina after about a year,” William said. “Judith and Anthony have not left Kasihta since the day we arrived there. I don’t think they ever will.”

“They are very happy in the life they lead there,” Mark added. “I swear in Savannah I never saw the smallest sign that they even knew each other, let alone anything more than that.”

William smiled a mischievous little smile. “I did.”

“I bet you fucking did.”

“What about Other George?” said William. “What’s become of him?”

“Gone with the French to subdue the Natchez,” James said as he stepped back into the room. He looked at Abraam. “No pork?”

“Yes,” Abraam said with a kind of pleased surprise. “That’s right.”

James nodded and vanished around the corner again.

“No surprises there,” Mark said. “He was one bloodthirsty motherfucker.”

“I felt terrible for you, having to go off with him on your own from Kasihta,” William said.

“We were not alone with him,” Thomas said. “We were part of a trading party.”

“The entire reason Tracy stayed with us was to avoid him,” William said. “There’s no way on earth that George did anything during that trip other than attach himself to you and pretend the Indians were not even there. Surely you can be honest about him now he is gone.”

“I see no reason to talk about him at all,” Thomas said. “How is Lako?”

William beamed. “In excellent health.”

“They’re still fucking,” Mark said helpfully.

“Tell them about your fellow, then,” said William. 

“Shut the fuck up, Will,” said Mark.

“Fine,” said William. “I’ll tell them myself later on.”

Thomas looked at the third member of their party, who was sitting quietly listening with the smallest hint of a smile on his face. When his eyes met Thomas’s, the smile grew a little larger. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not fucking any of these people.”

“But you are here in common purpose with them?”

“I wanted to meet Captain Flint,” he said just as James came back into the room carrying his rice-cooking pot in both hands.

James very slowly set the pot down on the floor, staring at Abraam with a cold, hard anger the like of which Thomas had never seen on him before. In a blink of an eye that anger grew hot, and Thomas went quickly to stand before him, obstructing his path forward and compelling him to look at Thomas and nothing else. Thomas was not the least bit interested in what the variety of noises behind him might signify; the only thing that mattered in this moment was that James did not do anything now that he would suffer for for the rest of his life.

“James,” he said, moving a little to the left as James tried to look around him. “James, look at me. James.”

James’s jaw worked furiously; his eyes were wild. He would not properly look at Thomas, though he made no further attempt to step around him. Thomas held his position, watching James with minute attention and preparing to take any action that might become necessary. Behind him now there was nothing but quiet.

“James,” he said again, reaching out slowly to take hold of his upper arm. “Do not go back there.”

James finally looked at him. A shiver went down Thomas’s spine.

“Do not go back there,” he said again, gripping James’s other arm and squeezing them both firmly. “It is not worth going back there for him.”

James nodded, clenched his jaw and looked away again. 

“I swear we didn’t tell him,” William said, sounding very near panic. “I swear we did not.”

“Then how the _fuck_ did he know?” James said through his teeth, his jaw still clenched so tightly Thomas thought his teeth might crack and break.

“I did not know until this moment,” Abraam said, sounding unnaturally calm. “But I had faith in my theory.”

“You’re a lying piece of shit,” Mark said. “You used us to find him?”

Thomas loosened his grip on James’s arms and sought to meet his eyes again. He tried to impress upon him with only a look that any immediate danger had passed. James half-closed his eyes but only a little of the tension went out of him, and far slower than Thomas would like.

“I am so fucking sorry,” William said. “James, I’m sorry.”

“We will go outside,” Thomas said softly, his voice pitched for only James to hear. “We will go outside and take some air.”

James opened his eyes, looking at nothing at all. “The last man to name me so in this place did not regret it long,” he said harshly and with great physical effort.

“Nor did his companion,” Thomas said, letting go of one of James’s arms so he could turn and face the man he was speaking to, “who came into this house and did not leave it alive.”

Abraam had not moved from his chair at one end of the table – or if he had, he had very quickly returned there. Mark was on his feet, his pistol aimed directly at Abraam’s heart. William, who had been seated between them, had stood and backed away as far as he could, his face deathly pale and his mouth seemingly stuck halfway open.

Thomas looked at Abraam and Abraam looked back at him, cool and unblinking.

“You will understand,” Thomas said, “if I ask you to surrender your weapons at this point.”

“If you don’t do as he says, Bram, I’ll kill you myself,” Mark said. “I might fucking do it anyway.”

Abraam very slowly produced four knives and his small pistol, laying them one by one on the table in front of him. “I said I wanted to meet Captain Flint,” he said, glancing from Thomas to Mark and back again. “I did not say I intended him any harm.”

James shook Thomas’s other hand off his arm and came out from behind him, walking over and resuming his seat at the table. He looked at Abraam’s weapons arrayed on the table and then back up at his face. He picked up the pistol and tested its balance in his hand, and then he asked slowly, precisely and with bone-chilling menace, “Why did you want to meet me, then, Abraam Taragano?”

Abraam watched James handle his pistol, his eyes following every minute movement with rapt attention. There was no fear at all in him, no remorse and no regret. He looked rather like a man whose dearest dream had been made real before his eyes and did not dare to look away from it. If Thomas had to put a word to it, he could think of none more fitting than reverence.

He came back to sit down in his seat beside James and nodded at Mark. Mark sat down as well, though he did not put away his gun. William remained where he was, his mouth still open and his hands now clenched into nervous fists by his side.

“I came to Savannah from London when I was nine,” Abraam said, finally lifting his gaze from James’s hands to look him in the eye. “I was nineteen when the smoke came drifting over town and half our garrison was mobilised and sent inland. Nobody would tell me why it had happened until I talked to Elaine.”

James’s cheek twitched twice as he absorbed that. “You talked to Elaine Northby?”

“We were friends,” Abraam said. “Does that surprise you?”

“Watch your fucking tone, Bram,” said Mark. “I still want to shoot you.”

James spared Mark a moment’s irritated glance and then returned his attention to Abraam. “What does or does not surprise me is none of your concern,” he said. “What should concern you is the situation you find yourself in here and what you might be able to do to get out of it alive.”

“I am not going to grovel,” Abraam said. “I believe all men should be free. I believe we should be born free and die free and that the time in between should be ours to do with as we wish. But a belief cannot be claimed unless it is acted upon, and so that is why I am here.”

“To die free?”

“Hold on,” William said, taking three careful steps toward the table. “I can vouch for him. I do vouch for him.”

“I don’t care,” said James.

“He saved my life,” William said. “We had never met. He did not know me, and he did not know I was connected to you, and he saved my life. That counts for something, James. Maybe not to you, but it counts an awful fucking lot for me.”

“I grew up with the name of Captain Flint,” Abraam said. “I heard it in London in horror stories my friends would whisper to me. I had nightmares about it when we sailed to the New World. I had nightmares about it when refugees came from Charles Town to settle in Savannah and told me their stories. I was there in town when the pirate ship came and when it left, and it was very soon after that that the stories spread about Captain Flint having disappeared – murdered, or escaped, or retired. Nobody knew. Then a few months later I heard such an extraordinary story from Elaine Northby. I did not understand every part of it, but it never left me. Then I went travelling and I met William, as he has told you, and then of course I met Lako and Mark and all the rest of them. I learned most of it from Lako, really. He did not know what it was he was telling me.”

“I should put a bullet in your brain here and now,” James growled.

“I came here to free slaves,” Abraam said abruptly. “I would have come even if I had not suspected that the James in these two’s beloved Thomas and Jameswas James Flint, because a belief is not real and cannot be claimed unless it is acted upon. I would have come anyway. But I did suspect that you were Flint, and I have come to understand what it is you were trying to do when you raised your fleet and your army, and I believe there is still a real chance that we can put the world to rights.”

“You have a way with words,” James said with a weary half-smile and a shake of the head. “I have known others like you.”

“You have never known anyone like me,” Abraam said fiercely. “There is no one like me. Do you know what I walked away from to do this?”

There was almost a fondness in James’s eyes now as he sat patiently and waited for Abraam to speak his piece. 

“I am a good fighter,” Abraam said when James made no reply to him. “I believe in what I am doing, and I am more than capable of doing it. I have earned trust and never once betrayed it, whatever any of you might think. I never said anything about Captain Flint to anybody until I was here in your presence to say it to your face. I have walked away from my family and surrendered my place in their society because I believe that when something is fundamentally wrong with the world I live in, I have an obligation to try to fix it. No one told me about this. I have not been encouraged or instructed to do it. I do it of my own initiative and my own free will. Who else can you say has done this? How many like me have you met, Mr Flint?”

“My name is James McGraw,” James said calmly. “If the other name passes your lips even one more time, no words at all will ever follow it.”

Abraam stared at him with fervour and without fear. “James McGraw,” he said. “I will fight by your side if you fight for freedom.”

“Then this is easily solved,” James said, pushing his chair back and sitting more comfortably in it. “I do not.”

“You –”

“I do not.”

James slouched back even further in his chair and glanced at Thomas. Thomas’s heart was still racing, his thoughts a whirl, and it took him a moment to understand that he had been given the floor and why he had been given it. 

“Then we do not need to be here,” Abraam said, his voice hard and flat. “There is nothing more to be said.”

Thomas looked at James again to make sure they understood each other; James gave him a slow, firm nod. “There is a little more to be said,” Thomas informed Abraam, “if you will stay.”

“If you intend to kill me, do it now,” Abraam told him. “I have had enough of talking.”

“Sure,” said Mark.

“No,” said Thomas. “William, will you come and sit down, please?”

William walked around behind Mark to sit at the opposite end of the table from Abraam, where he was closest to Thomas and Mark and furthest from Abraam and James. He clasped his hands nervously on the table in front of him and looked at Thomas.

Thomas looked around at all four men sitting at his table. “It is not enough,” he said, “to speak of freeing only some. If this thing is to be opposed, it must be cut off at the head.”

Abraam gave Thomas his complete attention for the first time, a light beginning to shine again in his eyes. “So where is the head?” he asked quietly.

“In the hearts and minds of men.”

“That is not at all consistent with my understanding of anatomy.”

“Give him a chance,” James said. “His oratory is rusty.”

Mark snorted and tucked his gun away again. Abraam looked intently at James, as though he were a riddle that Abraam only needed one last clue in order to finally solve for good. 

“We cannot cut the heart out of slavery in the New World by force,” Thomas said. “It is far too late for that. And although the practice has only recently come to Louisiana, it is here implemented by an empire with a long and sordid history of it. There is no force sufficient, at this time, to stand in its way.”

“Is that why you sit here and do nothing?” Abraam asked, his voice soft and scornful. “That is why you read and knit on your front porch and watch the sun set every day in peace and comfort?”

“Don’t talk to him like that, Bram,” William said. “You don’t know half of what you think you know.”

Abraam’s lip remained curled, but he nodded to Thomas. “Please continue.”

“Do you know the expression ‘feu de paille’?” Thomas asked him. 

“No.”

“A straw fire,” Thomas said. “A fire that burns itself out almost as soon as it begins.”

“Fogo de palha,” Abraam said. “I know it.”

Thomas got up from his seat and went into the study. He took some papers from his desk and set them down before Abraam, over the top of his knives, and sat back down in his own chair.

“I cannot read this,” Abraam said, shuffling through the papers and finding only French.

“Give it here,” said Mark. 

“His Majesty King Louis passed this decree in 1685,” Thomas said to all three of them. “It does not yet legally apply in Louisiana, but I am informed that it will be introduced here within three years at most, and likely much sooner.”

“So what is it?” Abraam asked impatiently.

“Slave code,” Mark said, throwing it down in disgust. “We know it’s legal, Thomas. That’s hardly the point.”

“It is exactly the point,” James said. “There is nothing more important to understand than that. It is legal.”

“If it were custom and practice and not enshrined in law, things would be different,” Thomas said. “By bringing it into the legal sphere, it can be fought in that sphere.”

“The king of France does not give me his ear,” Abraam said. 

“The king of France is twelve years old,” said James. “His regent, in exchange for being exclusively granted that title, gave the French parliament the power to challenge any decision made and any action taken by himself as regent, or by the king himself once he reaches his majority. In England, King George is undermined by his parliament, his ministers and his own son and heir. King Philip has presided over a vast decline in the power of the Spanish empire throughout his reign. I never in my lifetime would have thought to see France and England united against Spain, but Philip has managed it. That is the sad state of affairs of the great European empires.”

“The days of absolute power being vested in a monarch are coming to their end,” Thomas said. “Laws can and must be made by representatives elected by the people who will be subject to those laws. It is those representatives and that parliamentary system that we must use if we are to set right what has gone wrong in this world. That is where we must focus the vast majority of our attention. That is a battle that can be fought and won.”

“That’s very nice,” Abraam said. “Truly, it is. I understand what you are saying and I appreciate it is what you believe. But even assuming that there is merit in it, how long will it take for that method to bear fruit?”

“Far longer than any of us would like. But to free one slave by stealth, or even a hundred or two hundred by force, brings us no closer to a world in which there are none at all.”

“Do you agree with this?” Mark asked James, just as Abraam had opened his mouth to speak.

James looked around at them all, his gaze lingering a good while on Thomas before it returned to Mark. “I do,” he said. “There is no going back to the days of Captain Flint and his army of pirates and Maroons. That moment has passed. We now must look to the future and consider by what means we will best be able to shape it.”

“So what can we do?” William asked, most of the colour by now having returned to his face.

“Who is it that normally sits around this table with you?” Abraam added, looking speculatively between James and Thomas.

“This is a fishing village,” James said innocently. “We dine with fishermen.”

“Ah yes,” Mark said with a grin. “The humble, honest fisherman. Salt of the earth.”

James’s grin was a perfect mirror of Mark’s. “Exactly.”

“I think even if you had helped the slaves, you would not tell us,” William declared. “Perhaps you did not fight to free them, but I think you did help them by smuggling them away by sea after they had fled.”

“Think what you like,” James said to him. “The day I share a secret with you is inevitably the day I release it into the world, and so that day will never, ever come.”

William’s face fell. “What?”

“The very first day we met, you told me you did not care for secrets.”

“Well,” William said reluctantly, “that is true.”

“You told Lako about Savannah on the very first day you met him, and that has led directly to this man coming into my home and calling me Flint.”

“Well,” William said again, and then there was nothing further for him to say.

“Tell me,” Abraam urged. “I have shown that I am able to keep a secret.”

“Tell Mark,” William said. “He loves keeping secrets from me, and I can never talk him into anything. He’ll be able to tell me if there’s anything I can do to help. You do trust him, don’t you?”

“I am going to ask you all to step outside,” Thomas said. “I would like to speak privately with James.”

“Oh,” William said. “All right, then.”

Abraam stood first and walked away from the table, leaving every one of his weapons behind him. Mark rose and quickly followed him, looking more than ready to speak his mind once they were outside and alone. William reluctantly went after them, glancing nervously back at James and Thomas before closing the door behind him.

Once they were gone, James looked curiously at Thomas. “Are you all right?”

Thomas took a good look at James, now that he had a moment to do so. He could still see the lingering effects of the great shock he had had, and no doubt once they were truly alone there would be much more to discuss, but he looked quite remarkably well, considering the circumstances.

“You sent them out right at that moment so you could assess me at your leisure?” James asked, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards.

“I thought you might like a moment’s respite.”

James looked rather like he thought he should not be smiling, but each time he fought one down, another rose to take its place. “You are a very strange man,” he said. “Truly.” 

“It is also better that they have a chance to speak privately among themselves,” Thomas said. “I have no particular wish to bear witness to the details of that, nor to delay its occurring.”

“You make an excellent point,” James said. “And this way you will be able to help me with dinner, as you presently have no other duties as host.”

Thomas knew James was expecting him to at least pretend to resist the suggestion; he took great pleasure in instead leaning across, kissing him warmly and responding with only, “Of course.”

James just sat and looked at him, such open affection in his eyes that Thomas would have dearly liked to forget there were three men out on their front porch who they were eventually going to have to allow back inside. 

“Thank you,” James said quietly, and the words contained volumes. 

“Anything,” Thomas promised him. “Anything you need.”

“I need a drink,” James said. “And I need to cook our dinner.”

“Very well,” Thomas said. He stood, paused a moment and then leaned down again, lifting James’s face to his for another kiss. “I will arrange for the first while you begin the second.”

“Do not invite them back in,” James said as Thomas began to walk away. “We will see how long it takes them to knock.”


	34. A Story is Untrue - Day 1597

The boat was tied up at a bend in the river, camouflaged and secure. The far riverbank was dappled with sunlight, though the side they sat on was overcast. A fair breeze blew from the west, flowing eastward with the river. There was no way to know who had survived and who had not, other than the five of them sitting on the soft green grass, silent and overwhelmed by what had gone before. Valentine nursed a swollen elbow and Awesi a sore head. Udo favoured his right foot but would say nothing about it. James’s shirt was soaked with blood, though he had assured Thomas none of it was his own. Thomas sat quiet and unhurt at the end of the line, trying to make sense of what had happened and what was to come.

Not a word had been said since they had disembarked and tied up the boat. They would wait twenty minutes here at the designated meeting place, to give any other survivors time to join them. Then, according to the protocol, they would continue down the river, lay low for a few days in a secure location and send a message each to Richard, Laurens and Mrs Hurley. 

Thomas had known the business they were in was dangerous. He had mourned the fallen each year and honed his skills with sword, gun and his own bare hands, ready for the day when he would be tested on what he had learned. When the men had come around the corner, shooting as they came, he had stood and faced them, James on one side and Awesi on the other, and he had survived it, but he still had not been ready. He had not learned, even after all these years, to anticipate failure or disaster. Instead he had allowed himself to fall into the aura that surrounded Madi and the aura that surrounded James and believe that success was not only probable but inevitable. Those he had fought alongside, those he now sat with in heavy silence, were accustomed to grim loss and defeat in a way that Thomas simply was not. Something was building up inside him and very quickly becoming unbearable.

James rose to his feet, brushing damp and bloody hair out of his eyes and tucking as much as he could behind his ears, as his tie had been lost somewhere in the fracas. He took one look over the whole scene, exchanged a wordless glance with Udo then motioned for Thomas to get up and follow him. Thomas climbed to his feet and followed James a little into the woods, stopping a dozen or so yards in, where the river and their companions were still in view. “Tell me,” James said.

He needed to say no more than that. Thomas stopped masking his anger and his grief and presented it to James openly, allowing himself finally to feel the full force of it. “It is murder,” he said, though that was only the tip of it, the mere surface of what boiled inside him. “It is outright murder.”

“Yes,” said James, who certainly had enough experience in such things to know.

“It is a _massacre._ ”

“It was not much of one,” James said, with a note of pride in his voice that Thomas found unfathomable.

“I saw half a dozen bodies,” said Thomas, remembering the two he had personally seen fall. “Does that not qualify as a massacre?”

“It is yet to be seen if any of their other strikes were successful,” said James. “We number scores through this land now, possibly hundreds. It is too early yet to say whether we have been devastated by the blow.”

“I am devastated by it,” Thomas told him. 

“I know,” said James. “I am sorry.”

Thomas had seen James wounded, angry and grief-stricken. He had come to know that side of James as well as any other, and yet now, when such feelings roiled in Thomas’s breast, James exhibited none of them. He was not unfeeling, not unsympathetic, but as with any person who had risen to true command over the lives of others, he did not mourn while he was still in engagement with his foe. Thomas still had not decided whether he was fortunate or unfortunate to have avoided being conditioned in such a way.

“They did not hide their faces,” said James, looking closely at Thomas.

A coldness came over Thomas, and it mixed so easily with his hot anger that he had to wonder if they were not somehow composed of the same essential material. “You propose vengeance,” he said.

James squinted a little, standing a moment in thought. “Retaliation can be in pursuit of vengeance,” he said. “Sometimes it must be. But whatever may motivate it, retaliation must take place for a thing like this. They mean to frighten us and any who might think to join us. They must not be allowed to.”

The man who Thomas had seen shot through the neck – Luke, he thought, or Lucas – had not been frightened. He had stood and fought and died a bloody mess. “They meant to kill us, I thought.”

James shook his head. “They did not send enough men for that.”

“There were fifteen of them, easily, from each direction.”

“Yes,” said James. “And consider how many of us escaped. They mean for us to scatter and tell the tale of what befell us. Some will do just that. Some always do. And so a counterargument must be made quickly, and it must be made publicly.”

Thomas turned his head to look at their three companions. Valentine had his head resting against Awesi now, and Udo was standing in the shallows of the river keeping watch in both directions, steady and unmoving against the brisk flow of the water.

“It is not much of a force,” Thomas said. 

“It does not take much of a force,” James replied. “It takes only a committed force with a sound plan.”

Thomas knew commitment, but not of this kind. In all these years, he had not learned to channel his anger into any physical form; it still unspooled out of him in words, hot and bitter. He had always imagined he was too old, now, for that ever to change.

If James’s suspicions of a coordinated attack were correct, the list of the dead could be overwhelming. Thomas thought of Abenayo, Afi and Koshi, with whom he had spoken so much of leadership and legacy, of Isaac, Joshua and Joseph Davies, who had trusted Thomas with their stories and given him their blessing to print and distribute an account of them, of Adzo and Efua, who had been so deeply in love that sometimes they were too bright to be looked at directly, of Ami, who worked so hard on her half-written play despite the ridicule she faced for it, of Maureen Thompson, who had turned against her own father and brothers in order to join their number. He thought of Madi and her mother, of Ekow and of Richard, of the family they had slowly and carefully built over the years. 

“This is what we will be faced with forever,” said James. “It will never stop, and it will not retreat unless it is forced to do so. Never by choice.”

“I know that,” said Thomas.

“Mmm.”

“I truly thought we were making progress as a people, all those years ago,” Thomas said, watching maple leaves flutter in the breeze. “I thought we were moving past all of this and that reason would win the day, that some day soon the blood and pain would no longer be necessary. I dreamed that I might live to see that day.”

“I know you did,” said James. He did not need to say that he himself had never believed such a thing, as much as he would have liked to. He did not need to say to Thomas that he took no satisfaction in knowing that his lack of trust in mankind had been vindicated time and time again. They both knew, and the knowledge grieved them both. 

“Let’s go back,” said Thomas. 

He saw conflict on James’s face, saw him leaning forward but at the same time holding himself back. The blood on his clothing had mostly dried, through a combination of sun and wind, but Thomas could see it in his beard and in his hair which hung loose about his face; he could still smell it strongly on him. 

Thomas had stayed too clean through this operation, the whole venture, his entire damn life. He stepped forward and embraced James fiercely and completely, unconcerned by the dampness of James’s cheek against his or the intensity of the smell that met his nostrils. James’s arms were tight around him, and Thomas knew that today’s losses had settled somewhere deep inside him, finding company with all those that had come before them. In time, he too would mourn what had been lost.

Thomas rested his brow against James’s before they parted, taking a moment of rest before he would stand on his own with this new feeling that had awakened in him, this feeling that he did not think he could subdue even if he wished to.

“James,” said Valentine from just inside the tree line, approaching them with long, urgent strides. “Thomas. There are two men approaching along the far bank. They might see our boat, if they are looking for it. They definitely will see it if they cross.”

James and Thomas turned together to look toward the river, but Valentine shook his head. “You cannot see them from here, not yet. Udo is laying himself down in the boat. He will pretend he is dead. Awesi has taken to the ground with the gun. We are to stay out of sight and be ready to take them, if they cross.”

James looked at Thomas, but his expression had become impersonal. He was assessing the situation in which they found themselves. He was considering tactics and contingencies and had put everything else to the side. “What are their weapons?” he asked Valentine.

“Muskets,” Valentine replied. “Swords as well. Udo says they are the same men.”

They had escaped with only four weapons between the five of them: Udo’s sword, James’s sword, Awesi’s pistol and her knife. To engage in fighting with well-armed and equipped men would be dangerous; to defeat them and seize their weapons would be a great boon.

“I will go closer,” said James. “That pistol fires half its shots at best. Someone else will need to be within reach.”

“No,” said Valentine. “Udo says there is to be no movement that could compromise the ambush.”

“I will not be seen,” James said dismissively.

Thomas touched James’s arm and met his eyes for a long moment. _You are not Captain Flint any more_ , he did his best to convey through his face and his fingers. _They look to Udo here as their leader. Follow his direction._

James’s pride was a mighty thing, towering and selfish in its full power, but more powerful still were his vows to Thomas and the promises he had made, both to Thomas and to himself, about the man he would strive to be. Pride had not won a victory over love for a long time, and so it was here. James pressed his lips tightly together and nodded, and Thomas withdrew his hand.

“To cover, then,” James said. Valentine, unarmed and injured as he was, moved quickly westward, vanishing quietly into the foliage. 

James pulled his sword a little way out of its scabbard, extending its hilt in Thomas’s direction, the question plain upon his face. Thomas considered it for a moment. He knew from his training with James how the sword sat in his hand, how the slightly curved blade shone in the sun and the sound that it made when it clashed with other metal at speed. He could wield it against these men, but James was by far the better fighter of the two. Thomas could hold his own when given an opponent to fight with toe-to-toe; James was dangerously, recklessly proactive, finding ways to deliver critical blows time and time again whatever the situation. A sword in James’s hand was worth ten times the same sword in Thomas’s. That was what Thomas told himself, and though it was undoubtedly the truth, such an argument also allowed him to delay any discovery he might otherwise make about the lengths he would be willing to go to when presented with an opportunity for violence against such men as these.

He shook his head. James withdrew the sword from its scabbard, held it down low by his side and kept an eye out toward the river. “If all goes well, we will not be needed,” he said in a low voice before vanishing around to the east.

Thomas took cover where he was, moving only a little closer to the riverbank in order to have a better view of what was to occur. He had become better at this over the years, but he was no woodsman, no hunter, no skulker or master of stealth. He was too big, too heavy-footed and too accustomed to being watched wherever he went. He would stand still behind a thick tree trunk and not risk anything more.

Every noise that met Thomas’s ears was loud now: the rushing of the river, the wind in the leaves, the birdsong that he had not consciously noticed until this very moment. He watched the stretch of river that was visible to him, though he could not see much of the far bank nor anything of the boat they had hidden from view. He heard the splashing, though, as two men – or one man, or five, or ten – began to wade into the water. The river was shallow here, where it turned first southward and then back to the north, but Thomas had not thought it was so shallow as to be able to be crossed on foot.

“Watch out around you,” said one of the men. “They might still be around.”

“They won’t still be around,” said another voice, this one slightly deeper. “You saw them run.”

“You haven’t been in this game very long,” the first voice said. “You can make real money from it, and you can also end up really fucking dead. If you die, I’m not going to be able to catch as many, am I? So keep an eye out.”

The second voice said something then, but it was too quiet for Thomas to make any sense of it. He scanned the woods to his left and his right, where he knew James and Valentine were lurking, but he saw nothing of them. That gave him comfort, in a way. Thomas may doubt his own suitability for this kind of endeavour; he had no reason whatsoever to doubt the competence of any of his companions.

There was a strangled yell and a report from a gun, and Thomas stepped out from behind his tree, moving quickly forward until he could see the state of affairs.

There had not been two men but three. One wrestled with Udo in the boat; one Awesi kept at bay on the riverbank with her long knife, her weapon only half the size of the sword he brandished; the third was beginning to float limply down the river, spread-eagled and picking up speed.

Thomas left the line of trees, intending to aid Awesi in whatever way he could until Valentine or James arrived, even if only by serving as a distraction. Barely three seconds after Thomas had begun to move, James burst from the bushes to his right, flung his sword toward Thomas and plunged into the river, setting out on a course to intercept the body that was floating faster and faster downstream.

So Thomas went to collect the sword, feeling his blood surge in his chest, his head and his hand as he reached down to grasp its hilt. When he turned to go back, his thoughts in a whirl, he saw Valentine jump on the man opposing Awesi, wrapping his arms around the man’s shoulders from behind and holding him in place so Awesi could leap forward and thrust her knife into his belly all the way to the hilt, angling the blade upward as it pierced through his flesh. Valentine took the man’s sword from his suddenly weak grasp; Awesi took her knife out and plunged it in again.

Thomas ran to join them, though short of jumping into the boat and breaking Udo’s grapple there was little he could do to assist. He watched Udo wrestle the last of the men in the wildly rocking boat, trying to discern whether either had been injured or was likely soon to be. The white man had a considerable size advantage over Udo, but Thomas had seen Udo fight and knew that James respected him greatly as a warrior. It was possible that he already had the situation in hand.

Valentine made a running jump into the boat, throwing his weight on top of the two struggling figures. The boat tilted all the way onto its side, stood motionless for one long second, and then capsized. 

“What the fuck?” said Awesi, who had been kneeling and attempting to reload the musket of the man she had killed. “He is so stupid!” Thomas moved forward to the water’s edge, readying his weapon in case their enemy was the first to emerge. Awesi remained on one knee to aim her new musket, her face a study of absolute concentration.

It was a white man who came splashing first to shore empty-handed, gaining his feet in the shallow water and shaking his sopping wet hair from his face. Once he had done so he saw Thomas standing before him, sword in hand, and Thomas saw him hesitate a moment, looking closely at Thomas’s face to try to place him as friend or foe. 

“Are you going to –” he said, and then Udo reached out of the water and grabbed him by an ankle, pulling sharply backwards. The man was not able to bring his hands up in time to cushion his landing, and Thomas heard a sharp crack as his face collided with the rocky ground. 

“You have your uses after all,” Udo laughed, emerging from the water and smiling at Thomas before crouching to take a look at the condition of the fallen man. “You are our wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“So am I,” Valentine said indignantly, having emerged to stand waist-deep in the running water.

“You are a wild man,” Awesi told him, rising to her feet and leaning the butt of the musket on the ground. “With this.” She left a smear of blood along her cheek as she brushed her hand down it in reference to his scar.

“The two of you go and right the boat,” Udo said, lifting the man up by the back of his shirt and then driving his head into the rocks with both hands. “If there were three, there will likely be more.”

Awesi handed Thomas her musket and waded into the river to join Valentine. Thomas held the gun out to Udo, but Udo shook his head. “Here is the true wild man,” he said, and went back into the river to help James, who was swimming back upstream toward them, dragging the floating body behind him.

A low cheer came from the direction of the boat, which now bobbed right way up again in the river. Thomas did not look at the bloodstained rocks by his feet or the blood-soaked corpse of the man Awesi and Valentine had killed. He passed his eyes over the far riverbank; he watched for signs of danger in the woods at their backs. Valentine and Awesi came to collect the bodies and tossed them one after the other into the boat. James and Udo, once they finally reached it, did the same and then climbed onto the shore in step together.

James shook out his hair once he had made solid ground, grinning at Udo’s offended, “Hey,” when the drops James had shed hit his face. “Fucking pirates,” Udo said, wiping drops of water off his bare bald head, and James just grinned wider.

James looked around at the whole group as they gathered near the boat, all but Thomas dripping wet. Thomas offered him his sword back, but James waved it away. He held out the musket to Awesi; she gladly took it from him.

“What did they have?” James asked. 

“Guns and swords,” Valentine said, picking up the sword of the man Awesi had stabbed. 

“Money? Anything written down?”

“They did get a bit wet,” Valentine pointed out. “I don’t know what good any paper will be.”

James stomped over to the boat, jumped in among the bodies and began to rifle through their pockets, stripping them each of their jackets and boots with a practised hand.

“You can put the sword away,” Udo said to Thomas, a touch of laughter in his voice. 

“I have nowhere to put it,” Thomas told him. “James has the scabbard on him still.”

Udo grinned, and it was a bright friendly thing, leagues away from the surly silence he had always offered Thomas until now. Thomas did not know what he had done to warrant such a smile, but now that he had seen it he resolved he would remember it if Udo later returned to his customary stony visage. “You look like no pirate I have ever seen,” Udo said, shaking his head.

“People do tend to say that,” Thomas said. “Nobody has explained it to me.”

“You do not want to fight,” said Awesi. “Anyone looking at you can see it.”

“Most men do not wish to fight.”

“Yes,” she said. “And most men are not pirates.”

“He wants to fight,” Thomas said to Udo, looking at James. “He insists we strike back against them.”

“He certainly does,” James called out, shaking out a dripping wet jacket and searching through its pockets one by one, not bothering to look their way.

“We must find Madi,” said Udo. “And then we will fight.”

“There’s no time,” said James, tossing the jacket toward shore and starting on the next. 

“They will be searching for her also,” Udo yelled over to him. “We must find her first.”

“Why?”

Udo glared at James, all humour and geniality gone from him. “Because she is everything.”

“Nobody is everything.” James threw the second jacket and picked up the last. “We cannot afford for any one person to be everything.”

“We cannot, but you can?” 

James stopped, letting the jacket hang unattended in his hand. He and Udo stared at each other across the distance, and everything was quiet but the river and the wind.

“Do not even think it,” Udo said. “If you say one word comparing me to John Silver right now, I will shoot you where you stand. This is nothing like what he did.”

“You have nothing to shoot me with.”

“That will not stop me.”

Awesi and Valentine were watching anxiously, caught in that silent awe that took hold of them whenever the old war was spoken of. Thomas walked to pick up the two jackets on the riverbank and started to squeeze them dry. The two of them followed him, glancing at Udo and James frequently but never for very long at a time.

“You know her position on this,” James said, sounding dark and threatening, as Thomas had not heard him speak to an ally in an age.

“You do not lead us here,” Udo said, unimpressed and undeterred. “Nor does Madi, not like she used to. I do know what choice she would have us make, but here we are free to make our own choices. That is what she fights for, and I will not have you decide this for me. Madi has given everything of herself to this cause, time and time again. She does that for us. She does that for me, for Awesi there, for so many you have never known and so many none of us will ever live to meet. I can no more walk away from her than you can walk away from him, and I have much better reason for it.” Thomas could not help but look up, and sure enough Udo was pointing right at him with his chest up, challenging James directly and without fear. 

James resumed his inspection of the last jacket, discarding his hostility as he conceded the point. “In searching, you may lead them right to her,” he said.

“Then join me,” said Udo, “and make sure that I do not.”

James threw the last jacket to Valentine and crouched down in the boat to continue his search of the bodies. “Or you and I could part ways right here and now,” he called out, “and lead them exactly where we choose.”

“They will follow me more easily than they will follow you,” said Udo. “You would have me be the goose, and you would go to her.”

James looked up over the side of the boat, exchanging a long look with Udo. “Yeah,” he said. 

Udo stood a while in thought. “You and Valentine to find Madi,” he proposed, walking over to where Thomas, Valentine and Awesi stood together. “Awesi and I play the goose, and Thomas to play the sheep.”

“What does it mean to play the goose?” Awesi asked him.

“A wild-goose chase,” he said. 

She looked at him quite blankly.

“Have you ever chased a goose?”

“Why would anyone chase a goose?”

“If you want to catch it, then you must chase it.”

Awesi thought about this. “And then where does the sheep come into it?”

Udo looked at Thomas, a smile in his eyes again. “That is just a little joke.”

“We have done it before,” Thomas said. “We have played the slave-hunter in order to ensure we are in a position to thwart those who hunt in earnest.”

James climbed out of the boat again and came onto the shore. He looked appraisingly at Valentine, who returned his gaze with solemn resolve. “You and I, then, to seek out Madi,” James said to him.

Valentine nodded.

“I do not want to play the goose,” said Awesi. “I do not much like being chased.”

“More of them will come, after a time,” said Udo. “As you can see, they are not organised. They seek their own glory. You and I, we can work with that. They will be sorry they ever started this thing.”

Awesi glanced at the boat, looked at the blood on her knife and then at Valentine and James. “And only those two to go after Madi?”

“They will attract the least attention,” said Udo. He stared right at James, making clear the obligation he placed upon him. “They will see the job done.”

James clapped Valentine on the shoulder. “We will.”

“Watch out for him, then,” Awesi grumbled at James. “He jumps into boats and overturns them.”

“Per carità!” Valentine protested. “What were you going to do, shoot it?”

“Tshhh,” said Udo. “We are not children here. James, I would speak with you a moment.”

The two of them walked a little downstream and put their heads together, speaking rapidly. To Thomas’s eye, and his relief, they seemed generally to be in agreement with one another.

“Did you see Kojo or Allard?” Valentine asked Awesi softly.

She pursed her lips and shook her head. 

Valentine looked to Thomas. “You?”

“No.”

“Cazzo,” Valentine said, venom in his voice. “You make them pay for this, okay?”

“You see to it that Madi is safe,” Awesi said. “We will take care of what we need to take care of.”

Valentine unleashed a string of soft curses under his breath, looking impatiently over at James and Udo.

“Goodness,” said Thomas. “It has been a very long time since I heard any of that.”

“Ti farebbe bene giurare un po’,” Valentine said to him. “Arrabbiati.”

“What is this rudeness?” said Awesi. “I am standing right here.”

“I did not know he spoke Italian. I just had some friendly advice to give.”

“Dat is geen verontschuldiging,” Awesi replied, her eyebrows raised pointedly.

“One day I will meet another Italian in this fucking place,” Valentine said. “What have I done to deserve the Dutch?”

“You have met other Italians. You didn’t like any of them. You only like us.”

“I must like you. I speak English for you.”

“And I speak English for you.”

Valentine smiled, and his scar twisted and contorted. “So you do.”

James and Udo came back to them, their strides brisk and purposeful. Thomas offered James his sword, and this time James took it, sliding it into its scabbard and holding onto the hilt tightly for a moment before letting go. He looked agitated; Thomas felt quite the same.

“Udo knows where we will be meeting afterwards,” James said.

Thomas’s chest was tight, and his throat was beginning to close itself. “Right,” he said.

James took Thomas’s face in his hands and kissed him fiercely and without restraint. Thomas returned the kiss, closing his eyes and not letting his mind turn down any dark passageways or scramble for an argument as to why they should stay together, always, at all costs. There was no place for any such argument here.

“Until we meet again,” he said resolutely, pushing James’s dripping hair off his face on first the right side, then the left. 

James grabbed the back of Thomas’s head, pressed their foreheads together and took one long, deep breath. “Until we meet again,” he said.

Then they parted.

Valentine separated from Awesi with a similar reluctance and followed James into the woods, glancing over his shoulder just before they were lost from view.

Thomas took the sword and musket that Udo gave him. He helped to position the boat where it would be visible but the three corpses it bore would not be so at first glance. He listened to Udo explain the plan and committed every detail of it to memory. He followed the two of them across to the north side of the river. He found a comfortable log to sit on and took off one of his boots.

“I hope you still remember how to bleat,” Udo said.

“I do,” Thomas assured him.

“And how to bite,” Awesi added pointedly.

“He will,” said Udo. “Come.”

“I hope to not see you for some time,” Thomas said. “Godspeed.”

The two of them made their way quickly downstream, leaving Thomas to sit by the riverside alone on what was a lovely warm day for the season, waiting for men to come by so he could send them to their deaths.

When they came, there were four of them. They came in a run, slowing as they approached Thomas and looking around to see who might be with him. Thomas began to stand, feigned injury to his foot and sat hurriedly down again. “There are two of them,” he said. “That is their boat. We surprised them on the shore, and now they flee downstream on foot.”

“Only two?” said one of the men. “I heard five came this way.”

Thomas shrugged, attempting to reach James’s level of insouciance. “There may be more elsewhere. The woman was injured when we sighted them, presumably from an earlier skirmish. She needed the other’s assistance to move at any great speed.”

“The woman?” said another of the men. “Only two, and one a woman? And she’s injured?”

“Easy money,” said a third. 

“Three of my colleagues are in pursuit of them already,” said Thomas. “You will need to hurry.”

“Blimey,” said the second man, laughing. “Colleagues, he says. Your esteemed colleagues, is it?”

“Ben,” said the first man. “Shut the fuck up.” Then he addressed Thomas. “How far along are they?”

“Not twenty-five minutes,” Thomas said, judging it had been about ten.

The fourth man, who had said nothing to that point, began to run on along the riverbank, gun in hand. The other three followed him without any further word to Thomas.

He waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps then put his boot back on and stood. Four was a concerning number to send against two, even when those two were fully prepared and ready for combat and the four had been misinformed as to what they would face. He set off after them, feeling cold terror and colder resolve in his heart, preparing for the first time in his life to serve as the steel of the trap and not the bait sitting inside it.

Thomas was no wolf, but he was a man, and he had made his decision as only a man could do. He did not want to fight – Awesi was right; he never wanted to fight – but by God, today he intended to fight, and he would not hesitate. The time had come to deliver on the promises he had made and walk fully into this world he had chosen.


	35. A Story is True - Day 2584

This late in December, it was cold enough in the early hours of the morning that Thomas, even dressed in multiple layers of his heaviest clothing, was grateful for the fire. He sat before it in one chair with James in another next to him, watching five years’ worth of correspondence being steadily reduced to ash in front of their eyes. James’s expression was distant and a little drowsy; he had elected to stay the whole night awake rather than attempt to rouse himself in the middle of it. Thomas suspected, if left alone, he might very soon nod off to the sound of the rain on the roof and the quiet crackle of the fire. 

He spoke in a low voice, so as not to wake the mother and two small children sleeping in what had been Madame Gascoigne’s bedchamber before it had been their own. “It does not feel like six years have passed since we came here,” he said. “It feels rather like we are only beginning.”

“It feels exactly like six years have passed,” James said dryly. “I can feel them every morning in every part of me.”

Very soon, there would be a knock on the door and they would pick up their bags and walk down the hill in the dark and the cold and the rain, and Thomas would never see James quite like this again, slouched back comfortably in his favourite chair in front of the fireplace in this home that they had made so thoroughly their own. Thomas looked at him now, pouring as much of this moment into his memory as he was able so that it could be remembered and savoured to the very end of his days.

“I am entitled to complain,” James said a little defensively as Thomas’s eyes lingered on him. “I am fast approaching fifty.”

“It is not that,” Thomas said. “I am trying to come to terms with what we have done to your hair.”

James raised a hand absently to his head and ran it through his hair, which as of yesterday grew only a few inches long, sprinkled with white at the temples where Thomas’s had grown in grey. “I think it was best,” James said, though there was regret in his voice as he said it.

“I dare say it was.”

“But I do not feel quite myself without the beard,” James added, lowering his hand again to dangle off the arm of his chair and flexing his fingers for a moment or two before letting them fall still.

“You are the one who insisted on removing it,” Thomas pointed out. “If you so dislike the result, you do not need to shave again, and it will return.”

“I must be unrecognisable,” James declared, not for the first time that night. “These are the steps I must take.” He looked at Thomas, sighed, and said, “What?”

“There is nothing you could do in pursuit of disguise that would make you unrecognisable to me,” Thomas said. “Nothing whatsoever.”

“Yes,” said James. “But you see, I do not hide from you, as you do not hide from me.”

Thomas smiled and looked back into the low fire, where the last of the letters were slowly collapsing into nothing. “Quite right.”

“It will be cold, though,” James said after a while. 

“We will be belowdecks for the most part,” said Thomas. “We can keep each other warm.”

James snorted softly. “It is not as easy as you might think to do such a thing at sea.”

“I thought you were always one to rise to a challenge.”

“When have you known me not to be?”

Thomas opened his mouth for a quick reply but found he did not have one. After a moment’s reflection, he settled for saying, “Every time I have suggested you might benefit from making a friend.”

“I have made many friends, both here and elsewhere.”

“You have made allies. You have made business partners. I am not aware that you have made any friends.”

This time it was James’s turn to think before he spoke. “It is more difficult to make a true ally than a friend, in any event.”

“No,” Thomas said. “Not for you.”

“You make more than enough friends for both of us as it is.” When Thomas said nothing, James levered himself up out of his chair and began to pace slowly back and forth in front of the fire. “He had better be coming soon,” he said. “We need to be well underway before daybreak.”

“Jean has never been anything other than reliable,” Thomas assured him. “He will be arriving shortly.”

James passed Thomas half a dozen times before he came to a stop in front of him, with his back to the fire and his hands behind his back, firelight flickering over his cheek and jaw. “However the rest of it goes,” he said, “whatever might become of us, this has been so much more than I thought my life could ever be. It is a dream I thought I could never touch, and I have not only touched it but held onto it for all this time, and every single moment has mattered to me more than I can say.”

“Do you remember when you stood before me in my office just like this, twenty years ago, and you suggested that I might request a liaison who was more sympathetic to my views?”

The glare that James directed Thomas’s way then was truly something to behold. Thomas beheld it from his seat, and then he went and beheld it from much, much closer than that. 

“Strange pairs,” he said, running the back of his fingers down the heavy crease in James’s cheek, fully exposed now that he had shaved off his beard. “They can achieve the most unexpected things.”

“Gloat all you like,” James said.

“I will,” Thomas assured him quickly before he could continue.

“Gloat all you like,” James repeated pointedly. “I will still love you.”

Thomas took him in his arms and held him close. “And I you,” he murmured as James’s arms came up to hold him, and tightly. For a while, there was nothing else.

Until, eventually, there was.

It had been early spring when Thomas had first wondered aloud to James whether personally meeting with some of their correspondents in the British colonies might accelerate the progress they had been making. James had eyed him curiously, allowed that it might and said nothing more about it.

Once Thomas had had the thought, it would not leave him. He knew that others were far better positioned to bring their influence to bear over Louisiana than two Englishmen who, by virtue of being an ex-pirate and a Protestant, must by necessity live quietly. There was only so much that could be achieved by way of correspondence from Mobile Bay; conversation taking place piece by piece over the space of months would never be as fruitful as a room full of co-conspirators speaking long into the night. Thomas had history with England and its place in the New World that he would rather like to see put right, and the time he had in which to do so grew shorter with the passing of each day.

So he had spoken of it again, and James had listened to him. It had felt like a betrayal, at first, of so many things he had said before: that he would be happy with James and James alone, that he wanted them to grow old in this house that had become their own, that, having walked away from the British Empire, he would never wish to walk back into it. But James did not take it as such. He started rising earlier and joining Thomas in his study most mornings – time that Thomas had become accustomed, over the years, to spending alone. He started asking very pointed questions in that very particular tone he had and, upon receiving an answer, returning immediately with a question twice as difficult. He too had a history with England that did not rest easily inside him.

He had asked Thomas, in the early autumn, who he thought they should leave the house to.

For all that the decision had been arrived at mutually, after lengthy consideration and discussion, Thomas had still thought that when the day itself came, he would not want to go. As time had moved inexorably onwards, he had spent more and more of each day preparing arguments he could use on himself when the time came to leave and his cowardly side, his selfish side, inevitably reared its head. After the _Margaret_ , Thomas should not want to undertake any extended voyages by sea. After all that he had been and how famously he had been it, James must not risk doing so. Thomas knew he would never be easy among crowds of strangers. James, while far from an invalid, was increasingly feeling his age, and there could be no full recovery from the wound he had taken on the day they had made themselves free. There was no end to the misfortunes that might befall them at sea on or land. They would miss the home they had made here. There was the very real chance that it would, in the end, all come to nothing. 

When the knock came on the door, Thomas braced himself, expecting every one of those arguments to immediately assail him. Perhaps it was holding James so comfortably in his arms that repelled them; perhaps Thomas had sapped all the strength from them simply by rehearsing them in his mind so very many times beforehand. Whatever the reason, when Thomas heard the knock, he was not dismayed by it. He held onto James for a heartbeat longer and then they stepped away from one another, exchanging one long, final look and then walking together to the door.

Jean Gauthier was huddled on the porch, dripping wet with lantern in hand. “C’est l’heure,” he said, half-shouting to be heard over the wind and rain. “Vous-autres êtes prets?”

Thomas slung his bag over his shoulder, pulled his hood over his head and stepped out into the driving rain. He closed the front door firmly behind James when he came out, and then he followed the two of them down the stairs. He turned around at the bottom of the stairs to look up at their home one more time; Jean had already started down the hill, his lantern going along with him, and all Thomas could see of the old Gascoigne house was a looming, shapeless darkness.

“I am growing the beard back,” James shouted as soon as Thomas turned and began to walk down the hill. “It is too fucking cold like this.”

“I cannot hear you,” Thomas shouted back, shaking his head vigorously.

“You are a terrible liar,” James accused him at exactly the same volume, his voice easily audible over the wind and the rain. Then he pulled his hood closer around his face and trudged down the hill after Jean, Thomas following closely after him. Thomas had never been out in the village at this time of night, and if he had not been preoccupied with following Jean as closely as possible, keeping sight of James and contending with the wind at every step, he might have found it eerie. As it was, he was focused so intently on arriving in one piece at their destination that he did not immediately realise when they had reached it.

Unofficial voyages under cover of darkness were something of a specialty for the _Amalie_ and her crew, but even so, Thomas marvelled at how quietly they carried out their work and how little light they needed to do so. It was one thing to bandy about the truism that every fishing community was also a home to smugglers; it was quite another to creep onto a schooner in the dead of night and know that every member of its crew was as well-practised in this hidden trade as they were in the legitimate one they claimed.

Once aboard the _Amalie_ , Jean ordered James and Thomas belowdecks, insisting that they would only get in the way if they tried to help. Thomas was more than happy to follow such a direction immediately; James hesitated, and Thomas pulled him away before his pride could get the better of him. 

“It will not be cold as we come around Florida,” Thomas said once they were alone in the rather cramped and dingy cabin, the hatch firmly closed. “The weather will grow milder as we sail further north in the spring. When we come into the northern colonies, I will allow it might be advisable to protect yourself from cold.”

James flung his hood back and rubbed both hands vigorously over his cheeks. “It is easy for you to speak so lightly of it,” he said. “Your head is very well insulated.”

“I prefer to keep my hair shorter,” Thomas said. “We both suffer. Do you have any real complaints, or only grumbles?”

“I do have real complaints.”

“And what are those?”

“Gauthier needs to lower his staysail,” James said. “It will do us no good at all in winds like these to have it raised.”

Thomas sat down with a sigh on the nearest of the two sturdy chairs in the cabin. “It is going to be a long journey.”

“Yes,” James said, as though Thomas’s remark had been an idle one and not one intended to criticise. Then he spoke far more seriously. “If it gets too much for you, I trust you will say so without delay.”

“I will,” said Thomas, “and so will you.”

James nodded, walked around the table and sat down on the other chair. “What do you suggest we do to pass the time, since we are shut away as dead weight and not permitted to interfere with the masters at work up on deck?”

“I was hoping you would ask that,” Thomas said, digging in his bag. “I think when we arrive in Philadelphia it will be best if we are able to present as simple a framework as possible by which each of the colonies can make its transition from an economy reliant on England and its slave trade to a true independent state, empowered and driven by the strength of those it has liberated.”

“Yes,” James said. “That might be best. But is that not more or less what we have been discussing for the last three years?”

“I wish to reduce it to writing in its simplest and plainest form,” Thomas said, taking out the bundle of papers they had brought with them. “We have been speaking with likeminded people for so long that I fear we have taken our premise somewhat for granted. We need to find the heart of it, where the argument is undeniable.”

“It is an impossible task,” James said. “There is no one argument that will work on them all.”

“Then we had best begin as soon as may be,” Thomas said. “I have the letters here from de Fleury and Lagrange, and I have the codes, of course, but I have also kept the notes from most of our meetings. I think it will be of benefit if we look through them all afresh. Now that we are on our way, I am sure that we will look upon them differently.”

“You said we would keep each other warm,” James said, but he leaned over to look at the papers Thomas had, squinting at them upside-down in the low flickering light.

“If you are cold, come and sit next to me,” Thomas said.

James dragged his chair around to sit next to Thomas. Their shoulders brushed together as they looked through the papers Thomas had brought.

“We will be transferred to another vessel in a matter of hours,” said James, glancing over them all. “There is not the time to make a proper start on these, let alone enough time for a lengthy and considered analysis. There will be time enough for that when the real monotony of the voyage sets in.”

“A beginning only, then,” Thomas said, conceding the point. He tidied the pile of papers and tucked most of them away again. “Let us discuss the root causes of our dilemma and leave the details for another day.”

“The root causes,” James said.

Thomas took his hand and held it between them. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s begin there.”


	36. A Story is Untrue - Day 2584

James sat down below on the beach, breathing in the salt air and squinting against the wind, his bare feet and his fingers digging into the sand where he sat. Thomas’s chest ached as he watched him. None of this, absolutely none of it, was fair.

Someone clapped Thomas on the shoulder from behind and he turned to see Udo, who had gone away some time ago to make final arrangements for their departure, though he had not divulged any of the details to Thomas or to James. Now he was back for what was to be their final farewell, and Thomas knew there could be no more delaying of the inevitable.

“He has earned this retirement,” Udo said, coming to stand beside Thomas. “So have you.”

Thomas listened to the wind and watched the sun glitter on slow, gentle waves. “I thought one day he might choose it,” he said. “Over the years, I have wondered if he ever could choose it, or if it would inevitably be something that was forced upon him.”

“And you?” said Udo. “Are you ready to retire?”

“No,” said Thomas, “but that cannot be helped.” He looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, the vast distance that separated him from the life he had once lived, the great expanse of water that stood in as a threshold between old world and new. He thought of Europe and of Africa and the great circular voyages that had brought them all to be here in this place as they were. Then he looked down at James, who was rubbing his leg where it was bruised and sinking his feet deeper into the sand, alone as he had asked to be but visibly unhappy in it, and his sadness threatened to consume him.

“I believe we will win, in the end,” Udo said with the sort of steadfast fatalism that Thomas had come to expect from him. “I do not believe I will live to see it. I do not think anyone living now will see it. But I think it will come.”

“Our legacy is a world which is one step closer,” Madi said from behind them, walking quietly on the tussocky grass, her bearing noble as it always was but underlined now with sorrow. She had argued that James should stay long past the point where any reasonable argument could be made for it, giving no ground for five solid hours until first her mother had spoken to her, then Ekow, then Thomas and finally Udo, who had been the one finally to bring her to a tearful acceptance of what must be. Thomas had seen no tears since that day, but there were traces of them still in the heaviness of her step, the flatness of her tone and the shadows in her eyes. 

“Each generation must bring us closer to our goal,” she said, standing on Thomas’s other side. “That is the only way we can win. We must make sure our people always know that this is not the only way the world can be. James said to me once that if no one remembers a time before there was an England, then no one can imagine a time after it.”

The words brought a smile to Thomas’s face despite the heartache in the air. “The empire survives because we believe its survival to be inevitable,” he said. “I have heard that too.”

“I can imagine a defeat of England,” said Udo. “We were within reach of it once. But it is not just England; it is all the world. Our children will need to have a good imagination, and so will their children, and their children after them.”

“We will see to it that they do,” Madi said, her voice like steel. 

“Will you go down and say goodbye?” Thomas asked her.

“We have said our goodbyes.” She looked down toward James then forced her eyes away, her expression bleak. “There is nothing more to be said.”

“I would like to say something,” said Thomas, “and then I will go down to him, and we will walk around the beach, and we will be gone.”

Madi nodded and turned to him, her head held high and her gaze direct.

“It has been an honour to know you,” Thomas said to her. “It has been a great privilege to be at your side in fighting this thing. In Savannah, where I was held prisoner, I thought my life’s purpose had fallen by the wayside; I did not know that was a path I must walk so one day I could find myself here, having contributed to something that could truly change the world. I am honoured to have done so in your service. It has made me a better man. Wherever this ends up for James and I, I will do what I can, in any small part, to continue the work.”

“You will not be forgotten, Thomas Hamilton,” Madi said. “You will never be forgotten.”

“I do not mind if I am,” he told her with complete honesty. “I think I would prefer it. My name may go down as a footnote in history, as the man who fought to introduce the pardon to Nassau before its time and fell short in the task. It is no great loss to me to be remembered so. Others have done more, and others will do more in the future. Not everyone can be remembered.”

Madi’s eyes flickered down to the beach again for a moment.

“I suspect James will be remembered enough for the both of us,” Thomas said, a rueful smile on his lips.

Madi stepped forward and embraced him, her body sturdy and her arms strong. “I will always remember you,” she affirmed quietly.

“And I you.”

She swallowed thickly, looked him straight in the eye, allowed herself one lingering look back down at the beach then turned and walked back up the dune. Udo stepped up and embraced Thomas then, a hug that was all impact and strength and a kind of masculine affection that still did not come naturally to Thomas. “I never expected much of you,” he said when they separated again. “But I like you.”

Thomas smiled through the tears that threatened him; Udo’s eyes were perfectly dry as he answered the smile with one twice as large. “We cannot all be wolves,” Thomas said.

“No,” said Udo. “It is good to remember that. I wish you well, Thomas.”

 _I wish one day you too could retire from this_ , Thomas thought, but they would be empty words if he said them aloud. James had liked to say he could not disengage from the war he waged; he had been adamant he had no choice but to continue to wage it. Udo truly could never be free from it, and that was the whole goddamn problem. “I wish you the same,” he said instead. “I have truly valued your friendship, wolf and sheep though we are. I am sorry to have to leave you so suddenly and so permanently.”

Udo nodded, one side of his mouth turned up in a doleful smile, and there was a quiet moment between them. Thomas was warmed by the way Udo was lingering, seemingly as reluctant to take his leave of Thomas as Thomas was to part from him. They had forged a real bond that meant more than nothing to sunder. 

“I was the first to see them when they came,” Udo said eventually, his eyes flickering down toward James. “Now I will be the last to see him go. I did not think it would take anywhere near this long to get rid of him.” When Thomas glowered at him, he only grinned. “It is the truth.”

“I am glad he found his way to your island,” Thomas said. 

“He brought us much grief,” Udo said, shaking his head as his grin faded. “He did not deliver on his promises.”

“I know,” said Thomas. “But you are speaking the truth to me, and so I must do the same with you. I am glad that this bond has been made between us. I am glad James found his way to your island.”

“I have never liked pirates,” Udo said. “I was glad when I saw them on the beach. I knew what we were going to do with them, and I knew it was no more than they deserved.”

This was certainly not new information for Thomas, but there was something about its being stated so baldly at a time like this that took his breath away.

“I have never liked pirates, and I still do not like them,” Udo went on. “I believe that one is as good as they can be.”

Thomas looked down to James and back at Udo. “That is a compliment,” he said.

“No,” said Udo. “I do not think it is.”

“I think it might be.”

“I do not think it is.”

When their eyes met and their smiles matched, tears came to Thomas’s eyes again.

“Go to him,” Udo said, averting his eyes so Thomas could collect himself. “Get out of this place. Keep chickens and write poems. Do not look back.” He shook Thomas’s hand firmly when it was offered and clapped him on the shoulder with the other. Then he stood back and waited for Thomas to leave. 

Thomas made his way down to the open beach, where James was waiting for him, and he did not look back. He took his lesson from Madi, from Udo and from countless others who had gone before them; when one could not go back, there was nothing to be gained from looking.

James watched Thomas as he came, running his fingers through the sand as though it were water. He did not ask if anyone else was coming down or if Madi had already gone. He sat alone and looked like nothing more than a young boy bereft, despite all the signs of age that now rested on him. Thomas sat next to him, sinking uncomfortably into the sand and thinking about what the state of his clothes would be now that he had done so. But he wanted to sit with James a moment and mark this transition from one thing to another, finally able to do so together, united, with no pained parting or miraculous reunion. They could hold hands and walk forward into it together, when they were ready.

“I do not particularly want to go back out to sea,” James said, sprinkling sand atop sand like salt over soup.

“No,” said Thomas, thinking of the _Margaret_. “Nor do I.”

“But now that we are,” said James, a touch of dry humour coming into his voice, “we could go and collect the cache. Now that Captain Flint is confirmed to be still alive and at large in the colonies, there is no longer any advantage to keeping the secret.”

“Captain Flint has grey in his beard and white at his temples,” said Thomas. “His joints creak of a morning and his headaches can be powerful enough to blind him.”

James ducked his head and looked sideways at Thomas, his expression becoming roguish. “We could take to the high seas and raise the black under a brand new banner,” he said. “It is never too late to sign onto the account. We could pick up the cache, raise a fleet and rain hellfire on the whole lot of them, the slavers and the treasure ships and the warships. There is more than one kind of retirement a person can have.”

“I would not invite the curse of the _Urca_ gold to come onto you again,” Thomas said gently but very seriously. James spoke in jest, but Thomas wanted there to be no doubt as to his thoughts on the matter. “And I certainly do not wish it to find its way to me.” He reached over and took James’s hand, holding it firmly in his and resting them both atop the sand. James sighed and subsided, but not into the melancholy he had displayed earlier. He did not brood or grieve but sat and quietly waited, holding Thomas’s hand, seemingly not in need of any of the consolation Thomas had been prepared to give him. If anything, Thomas found himself soothed by James’s unexpected equanimity. He found he could breathe easier and deeper the longer the silence lasted.

“So where do you want to go?” James asked after a little while.

“I want to go back with Madi and Udo. I want to stay here and fight this.”

James squeezed his hand. The sand rubbed against Thomas’s skin.

Thomas did not wish to sit here and complain, and James seemed as ready to depart as he was ever likely to be. “Let’s be on our way,” he proposed. “We would not want to miss our boat.”

“No,” James agreed. They climbed to their feet, still holding hands. James bent down and picked up his shoes but made no move to put them on. “There is no sense in getting sand in your shoes,” he said to Thomas.

“I do not want sand on my feet either,” said Thomas.

“Suit yourself,” said James, and started down the beach.

“Udo told me I should keep chickens and write poetry,” said Thomas. “What do you think of that?”

James squinted sideways at him. “Has your poetry improved since 1705?”

Thomas stopped dead and turned James around to face him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said has your poetry improved since 1705,” James repeated a little louder. His tone was serious and his mouth was neutral, but there was suppressed laughter in his eyes, and, as always, that laughter found its way to Thomas’s heart.

“It has not,” Thomas said. “I have not been able to devote quite as much time to it as I would like.”

“You never devoted any time to it whatsoever,” James accused him. “You thought reading poetry and philosophy made you a poet, and you were very, very wrong.”

“Of all the ways you could ever betray me,” said Thomas, “I think this is the most hurtful of them all.”

James smiled and started walking again. Thomas took a quick step forward, pulling James around toward him by the hand. He stood nose-to-nose with him and dared him to rise to the occasion. James licked his lips, and his eyes flickered between each of Thomas’s. “We should be going,” he said without demonstrating any intention whatsoever of moving.

Thomas leaned in until their foreheads touched and rubbed his nose a little against James’s. James let out a little puff of laughter, kissed the tip of Thomas’s nose and leaned back away from him.

“You are a fiend,” Thomas proclaimed.

“Perhaps,” James replied, his grin wicked.

“We will resume this conversation later,” Thomas said firmly. “When we are at leisure.”

“Perhaps,” James said again, affecting complete unconcern. Then he stepped in close to Thomas, took his face in both hands and kissed him, leaning so closely into him that Thomas could do nothing but return the kiss, put his arms around James and hold him. For a while, there was nothing else.

Until, eventually, there was.

“We should not miss our boat,” James whispered into Thomas’s neck. 

“Mmm,” said Thomas. No part of him wanted to leave this place; no part of him wanted to let go of James.

“We will resume this conversation later,” James said a bit more firmly, lifting his face to Thomas for one more kiss.

“Perhaps,” said Thomas, but he was already pressing his lips to James’s, incapable as always of denying James anything he wanted. 

Perhaps retirement was not such an unthinkable notion after all.

“And you can work on your poetry,” James said, stepping back from Thomas but reluctant to look away from him. “See if you can better _Oh dearest Fred, most glorious king_.”

Thomas did not refrain from rolling his eyes, and James laughed out loud at him. Thomas held his hand out, and James took it, and together they walked around the beach, ready to start over once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are, and it's all over! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who’s read, shared, subscribed, given kudos, given comments, given time and energy and attention to this fic. I’m so proud and happy to share it with you all, it was incredibly rewarding to write and incredibly rewarding to interact with all of you who have been along for the ride <3
> 
> I started writing this in September of last year and finished it around the middle of this year, but I held off from publishing it until the redundancy from my job took effect, thinking it would be nice to mark that transition in some way. Lo and behold, I’m publishing these last two chapters while deeply in the process of arranging my home office in a house I’m moving into in just under three weeks, where I’ll be self-employed for the first time in my life – so that’s bookends for you!
> 
> I want to thank YourOzness, who took on the colossal task of beta reading this fic and nailed it, whose advice, encouragement and feedback was absolutely invaluable, especially as I got nearer and nearer the end. I also want to thank Jess, who’s been an amazing writing buddy for what’s now a really, really long time – can’t wait for the day we finally upgrade to writing nemeses <3
> 
> I do have another Black Sails story which I wrote this year, which is currently in post production and will likely start to be published early in the new year when I’ve moved and recovered and had a chance to get it fully ready to go. The story summary is likely going to be, “The gun doesn't go off,” so make of that what you will – or if you happen to have read the comment on this fic where I pretty much give it away, then fine! anticipate exactly what it is >:)
> 
> One other thing I have decided to offer on this fic for anyone who wants it is customised (bespoke?) ebooks – so if you would like to read the stories in separate ebooks, want a copy where each Story is Untrue chapter comes before True rather than the other way around, if you want to be able to read it chronologically backwards or in a very particular font or anything like that, get in touch with me here or on tumblr (galahheadgalahad) and I’ll see what I can do for you! It will force me to properly learn the compile feature on Scrivener, and I have had mild praise for an epub I did for a friend of mine compared to the default download from Ao3 (“better aesthetically imo”), so if you’d just like something like that I’m happy to do it! Tricky requests might take a while to work out whether I can do it, but I’m very willing to try.
> 
> Authors notes really shouldn’t be longer than the chapter itself though, so I will contain all the rest of my emotions and just say that wherever, whenever and however you're reading or have read this fic, I’m proud of it forever and would always love to hear your thoughts and feedback. 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Alex


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